by Ben Rayman

Created on: February 10, 2010

The wisdom of Nana via the Gebo passage

Long before I set eyes on Jackie Black, the Gift Rune revealed that a partnership in some form was at hand. My grandmother, Marganita "Maggie" Cohen-Grabowsky was into predicting the future, and throughout my childhood and youth I was her main subject. I can recall those sessions, however, one stands out vividly in my mind when I was a boy of seven. The fall season begun and it was late in the evening. My tiny pleasing plump soothsayer, whom I called Nana, summoned me to her room. Immediately after I knocked on the door, her voice thundered the command of "Enter" and then, tapering off in her usual soft-spoken manner, "my son."

As I swung open the door, a strong sweet herbal potpourri grabbed my sense of smell that slightly teared my eyes. Burning candles dimly lighted the room’s edges making it difficult for me to focus where to walk; and thusly my glazed eyes recorded a star-lit effect atmosphere in my memory banks.

"Over here Benjamin," exclaimed Nana. I was never surprised of Nana’s attire because she was always done up in her usual gypsy garb. However this time, she had an authoritarian stance with her back to the fireplace. She was dressed in a full-length white robe and had her arms crossed.

"Gee! You look like God," I muttered. The closer I got, I could only make out a glowingly board smile, and then I felt her hand guide me to our secluded world.

Nana began her usual mumbo-jumbo over her crystal ball. I could feel my eyes crossing with boredom as she went through the usual litany of my future – a good life and a fine wife with many children. Suddenly she stopped mid-sentence. I looked up. Nana’s eyes were unfocused and her face was slack. It gave me the creeps. Then she spoke, slowly and deliberately.

"You will travel east – far to the east. You will learn a new life and find your calling there. And there you will meet your true love."

A second later she was back to her old self, Nana the fortune-teller, rattling on about how I would do well in school.

To this day, I can easily recover the events of this childhood session with Nana. It was on Thanksgiving Day in 1980. I was barely 20 and this holiday time was more than a tradition, but a reunion for the Grabowsky-Cohan-Cohen families-aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents.

Most of my immediate family was clustered within Ohio and Michigan: Toledo, Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, Lansing and Kalamazoo, however my grandparents settled in Traverse

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