Published in Hot Chocolate for the Mystical Lover by Arielle Ford, Dutton, 2001.
The Land of Enchantment
By Carol Allen
“Don’t even try to have a stable relationship in your twenties. It simply won’t work. You’re not ready,” warned the man across the table from me. He was a Vedic Astrologer analyzing my astrology chart. It was 1990 and I was twenty-three. “At around the age of thirty your luck will change. From then on you could marry very happily.”
Thirty? That sounded million miles away. Seven years! 1997? That was way too long to wait. How would I possibly make it that long? I’d already been in the weddings of three different friends as well as my sister’s who’d married at twenty-four. She met her husband at twenty-three, my mother met my father at twenty-three. I was twenty-three. So why did I have to wait until thirty?
“I have a boyfriend who I love very much. (I’d even met him at the magical age.) Could it be him?” I asked. So far the astrologer had been accurate about everything else. My heart started beating loudly as I held my breath and waited for his reply.
“I don’t think so. Usually the right person doesn’t show up until you are in the right time – which you are not.”
My heart sank and yet I felt he was right. I certainly didn’t feel ready to get married, and although my boyfriend Bill felt like a soul mate, we never discussed a future and he had told me several times that he never envisioned having a wife and kids.
I was so intrigued with Vedic astrology after this reading that I began to study and practice it myself. Time and again, I saw its accuracy be clear and correct with each consultation I gave. I quickly understood in my own chart what that first astrologer had observed. I could easily see there was nothing to support a deep, stable relationship with one person until I was thirty. But then, everything in the cosmos seemed to rearrange itself just to usher in Mr. Right for me.
It was so obvious that I’d have to literally lock myself up in a closet and go into a coma for a year if I wanted to avoid meeting him. Bill and I had a close but rocky time until I was twenty-six. He then decided that he was ready to marry after all, but I still was not. We decided to part. I was young and inexperienced and didn’t realize how special our relationship was or how difficult he’d be to replace. Try as I might, I could not find anyone to hold a candle to him.
The years crawled by. I dated a number of people and “sewed my oats,” to speak. Nothing seemed to last long. I grew more and more heart-broken over Bill but clung to the encouragement of my chart, knowing that my luck would change soon. Although I missed Bill terribly, I never regretted our break-up because I knew it wasn’t right for me to marry him when he asked and reasoned that someone else, probably even better, would show up the timing was right in 1997. Besides, he soon was engaged to another woman and seemed happy.
“Wow, Carol,” exclaimed my astrology mentor one day in 1994, “look how many indicators point to your husband showing up starting at the very end of 1996.”
“ I know! I can’t wait!” I gushed.
“Until then just have fun,” he encouraged. That was his nice was of saying nothing would work out until then.
Well, I was sick of fun. Meeting lots of men I wasn’t interested in or being rejected by those I was interested in after a date or two or a month or two was not my idea of fun, but that was all I’d been through since my break-up with Bill. Finally, in the middle of 1996, I became so fed up with the whole situation that I put myself on quarantine. No more wasting my energy! I’d practiced enough. I would wait until the conditions were right, when the forces of nature were working with me, not against me. Why keep pushing the river? I knew what I wanted and would wait on the will of heaven to smile upon me.
That Christmas season, I went to a dinner party with thirty Vedic astrologers. We all sat around a large table to a scrumptious meal. We took turns sharing the major highlights of our charts and making predictions for the coming year for one another.
The table became very animated when it was my turn. “Mr. Right is coming!” “You’re going to get married!” Oh, could it really be true? At long last would I finally meet him? Would we finally find each other? They all seemed in absolute agreement with what I’d known for many years now. So, when would he appear? The influences began December 26th and lasted for a year. He could arrive really at any time in the year. From what I could tell, the spring seemed the most powerful. I had total faith in my system and for months I’d been telling clients, “I’m getting married next year!”
“Wonderful,” they’d respond. “Who’s the guy?”
“I don’t know yet. We haven’t met!” I’d laugh.
That Christmas I was going out of town. It was the first Christmas in seven years that I was going on vacation. I set out for New Mexico, “the Land of Enchantment” to visit my sister and her family. They lived in a tiny rural town of two hundred people. I looked forward to the rest and time with my relatives. Little did I know this trip would prove to be my date with destiny.
There’s one little fateful twist about this little rural town – it’s where Bill and his fiancé had lived for three years. I saw him at a group Christmas dinner – escorted only by his mother. He asked me to dinner a few nights later. We were friends. I thought nothing of it.
December 29th we had dinner. He confessed he was still in love with me and wanted to get back together. I couldn’t believe it. Here I was three days into my divine window of opportunity. Could it be him? All these years apart I’d imagine someone new, someone else. Could it be that God sent back the greatest love of my life when I was ready? My mind spun.
“Well, I’m not sure,” I stammered. “I need to let you know that I’m astrologically suppose to get married in the coming year. This spring is the most likely time I will meet him. We can try seeing each other but I can’t be exclusive.” I felt I should be honest.
Who was I kidding? By the spring, during another fateful visit to, “the Land of Enchantment” I knew it was him. We eloped that September and are very happy. In spite of my impatience, it was truly worth the wait.
