What’s your sign?

I’m a Virgo, but that wasn’t necessarily the sign I was talking about. Every day we see signs, on the street corner, on buildings, hanging on a door or wall. Then there are those signs that aren’t posted for the world to see and notice, but for the individual. If he or she is open to seeing them or even hearing them.

Perhaps the sign is a symbol to you. Something that whenever you see it makes you smile or lets you know that something is going to occur, or that you need to call someone.

There are and have been several of them in my life. They change just as I do, but they are there if I pay attention. Not all of them have been good, but more times than not they are positive.

A simple example is seeing a truck with a name of a business on it drive by me every day for a week. I kept seeing the truck and it drove me nuts because it always reminded me of a person I hadn’t talked with for months. Then bam! I heard from him. The truck was a sign.

Three years ago, I was in Kentucky on a business trip and told everyone that I was going to buy a house that weekend when I returned to New Hampshire. The people I worked with thought I was nuts. Little did they know.

The night I returned home, I sent my real estate agent 3 places I wanted to see. I had very little to go on but pictures, but I chose 3 that looked the most like what I was looking for. My real estate agent emailed me back and asked me if I could have everything in a house what would it be. I told her I wanted an open floor plan, wood floors, granite countertops, a yard (this was most important to me), and on a whim I said I wanted an apple tree and a rock wall. I have no clue where that thought came from but I threw it out there.

The first house we saw Saturday morning was my house. I knew it the moment I crossed the threshold, but my fate was sealed when I walked out onto the back deck. The first thing I heard was the rattle of the old, wooden roller coaster at the amusement park behind the tall trees followed by the screams of happy people as they zipped down the ride. While standing on the deck, I saw this big old tree so I asked what kind it was. An apple tree! The whole area had been an apple orchard about 50 years before. My heart did a little trip in my chest. Then I looked to the right of the house and what did I see? You guessed it, a rock wall. The moment my real estate agent and I walked out of the house, I told her I didn’t need to look any further. I’d found my house. Apparently, even the builders knew I was the one. The piece de resistance was when my friend who had been overseas calls me and tells me that he was back in the states and I told him I was buying a house. The next day he was here and was the first person to see my new home.

What about the signs we don’t see, the ones that while doing the most inane, day-to-day task strikes you and you know. Some might call it intuition, premonition, or déjà vu (if you’ve seen it before).

About six years ago, I was doing the spring-cleaning thing, standing in the spare bedroom folding clothes to give away when out of nowhere came a thought about my sister. I picked up the phone, called my sister, and without preamble told her, “You’re going to have a girl.”

My sister laughed and said, “What?”

Just so you know, in my family we do not have boys and girls. We have all boys or all girls. My sister already had two sons so everyone assumed the third would be a boy. It’s how my family works. But for some reason on this day, my mind said different.

We both laughed, but she told me she would know in two weeks. Two weeks later, my premonition was confirmed. Now I have a little niece who is the spitting image of my sister, right down to the button nose sprinkled with freckles.

This type of sign actually happens quite often with me. A little over a year ago, I was hanging out on my hammock drinking a beer or two waiting for a friend of mine to show up. While lazing on the hammock, swinging back and forth, I had this odd thought cross in my mind and it stayed. As soon as Rick walked over to where I was, I looked up and said, "You're moving."

Thank goodness the move was only temporary, but I knew without him saying a word. He hadn't even mentioned it as a possibility.

Almost seven years ago, I was unemployed like many others when the economy took a nosedive. I decided that there had to be more to life than technology and that I wanted something more. At first, I was depressed and all I did was read, look for a job, and clean the house. I practically ate books. I couldn’t read enough. The more I read, the more I started looking into the new things that I read about.

I tried glassblowing, cake decorating, and even chocolate making. The chocolate making stuck, but at the same time, something else happened – I started writing my own book, my first book. I became a writer and six years later, I became an author. The book was and is a huge symbol for me. It symbolizes balance in my life. The balance between left and right brain, the logical and the creative.

What signs do you see or hear? Do you pay attention?