Most of my friends are, what we called in the 1960’s, spiritual seekers. To counter to my ultra-active personality, my friends suggest quiet calming introspection, meditation to a soft voice accompanied by ethereal New Age background music to slow me down. The type of music I imagine getting louder and louder just before we would be invaded by aliens.
Meditation, they would instruct me, would put me in present time, allow all my negative thoughts and fears to go away, focus my attention, provide relief from the unconscious habits of ordinary existence.
I became present. Paid attention. Thoughts disappeared. My form of practice was augmented not with soft music but with earsplitting bells, whistles and blinding flashing lights constantly changing their color and imagery each millisecond. Slot machines.
Telling everyone, including writing a column about my gaming for this paper, thus informing the entire town, became my litmus test for friendship. “You!!! You waste your time and money at a casino!” If I wasn’t going to be accepted with my proclivities and all, then keeping up an illusion was too weighted a persona to maintain forever.
Not that I didn’t feel guilty about my guilty pleasure. I assuaged my wrong doing by not spending my “real” money. Often I raised the funds to go. This year “free “money kept falling into my lap. I sold two paintings. I received a check for $1,200 from a class-action suit I didn’t know included me. I was sent a surprise Medicare reimbursement.
I put some money aside to use at Live Casino in Columbia County, Maryland during a visit to my daughter.
My slot-playing habit was always strictly controlled by vigilant moderation. Moderation to the extreme.
It’s difficult to break a habit. Compulsions have power. White knuckling rarely works beyond the moment. So much energy is expended to resist even once. So little fuel is left for the dozens of subsequent times an obsession co-opts the brain in a continuing thought-loop of “I want. I want. I want” only silenced, relieved by the pleasure of giving in, smoking the cigarette, drinking the alcohol, finally sitting in front of a favorite game, relaxed and excited at the same time.
Since I had money to waste, I took my daughter to The Mall in Columbia, Maryland with over 200 establishments covering 1,100,000 square feet. Somehow, we found the Macy’s.
Now, I digress. To tell the rest of the story requires background support. In 1970, my husband and I traveled around the world hitting all the popular hippie hot spots.
In Istanbul, I located a traditional Turkish bath, a place not frequented by tourists. The humongous opulent space covered entirely in marble floors and walls enclosed by a decorative dome ceiling. Throughout the space were dozens of hot and cold water pools, showers and fountains. Some for soaping others only for rinsing. Hundreds of entirely naked women and children, frolicked, laughing, scrubbing each other with unselfconscious abandonment and joy, a total contrast to their shy, modest almost frightened demeanor on the streets of Istanbul. What was most unexpected, the women looked like me from top to bottom.
I fit in until I used the wrong fountain, my secret yet unknown. A woman came up to me screaming in Turkish. The washing stopped. All eyes were upon me. When I answered in English, chaos. Then glee. Several women grabbed me and began to wash me everywhere. That’s right, everywhere.
A half hour later in the dressing room all the good vibes dissolved. They dressed themselves in dark baggy angle-length loose kaftans with opaque head coverings. I dressed in tight jeans and tie dye. As I walked past them, they pulled their children closer.
A Turkish woman rolling a stroller clandestinely snuck up on me in Macy’s Department Store in the Maryland Mall and whispered a furtive request. She looked familiar to me.
“I have four children. I cannot feed them. Do you have some money you can give me?”
It takes desperation, chutzpah to panhandle inside a department store in an upscale community. If caught, she could be arrested. She was wearing clothes to disguise her circumstances — a long American-style dress, her head stylishly covered. “Why me?” I wondered. Could it because I looked like the women of her country?
I only had 25 cents and a credit card. She took the quarter.
A few minutes later, I remembered I had a $100 bill tucked deep into my wallet to use later in the day at the casino. I told my daughter, “If I can waste my money so foolishly, I should find her and give her the hundred.” The hunt began. First the shoe department, then the active wear, onto the lingerie, sleepwear, formal dress, underwear. She disappeared. A passionate willfulness, a powerful intention took over me, but she was gone.
I fantasized returning later that day or the next and finding her with her sweet quiet smile sidling up to me, choosing me among the throng of shoppers to ask for help.
I went to the casino anyway, but my heart wasn’t in it. Luck gave me a few good bonuses, but the usual dopamine rush did not occur. Lackluster. I was done.
Right after the 300-mile car ride home, our automobile died. It would have cost $10,000 to replace the engine.
We decided to buy a new used car. It cost more than our house did 50 years ago.
There would never be enough surprise money to replace the cost of the new vehicle. My slot machine play was over anyway.
I looked up common names for Turkish women. I named her Asya. In Turkish Asya means Sunrise, in Hebrew “God has favored me.”
I hope Asya is well. I wish her good fortune. I would like to believe that all will turn out positively for her and her children. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I found her again on my next visit. What a magical coincidence that would be.
We don’t choose the miracles, they just happen through grace.
Although I could not give her $100, she saved me thousands in ill-advised money wasting in the future. The magic tinged with regret and sadness. I wanted to do a kindness to her, instead it was the other way around.
Join the family! 
