I drove south on the Interstate 95 in the State of Maine, US, heading for Portland.  I had the manuscript of Soul Gifts with me and planned to meet an aboriginal poet and healer – Carol Desjarlais. Eagle Woman. Coppery-orange poplars flagged the end of the tourism leaf-peeping season. I listened to Nickel Creek’s Doubting Thomas and replayed the song a few times to make sure I understood the words,

...please give me time to decipher the signs,
please forgive me for time that i’ve wasted,
i’m a doubting thomas, i’ll take your promise,
...though i know nothin’s safe, oh me of little faith
 
(Nickel Creek, Doubting Thomas, Why Should the Fire Die?, 2005)

I clicked on my blinker and swung to an off-ramp.  I parked in an upscale truckers’ stop. Pilots. Stepping into the late-afternoon air, I stretched my shoulders and legs then started towards the door. I spotted a playing card on the ground, picked it up and flipped it over. The eight of spades.  I put it in my wallet and later showed it to Carol. It was November 4, 2005.

"Carol, ever since I started to pull this manuscript together in 2001, I have bumped into the number eight. The other day I rented a garage in my apartment building. I asked for the one closest to the elevator.  It turned out to be number eight. People tell me I am an eight because of my birth date. (I was born on Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday.) Joni Wodlinger, who practices Feng Shui, told me this is the period of the eights. Examples of the eight are in the book.

Carol nodded her head.  Smiled. “The eight means power and abundance."
"Joni said that the number reflects the Qi (spirit) of wealth and happiness."
 
"Yes." Carol nodded again. "The eight is also symbolic in a lot of cultures. The eight has no beginning. No end."

I said, "I notice coincidences but this eight business has me stumped.  In 1999 my daughter gave me a painting for Christmas." I pointed to the cover art of Soul Gifts- a sphere with eight points. "My daughter and I had no idea we would use this for the cover. My nursing colleague, Mei-Yung Nguan, told me that the eight is very important in China and that people will pay huge sums of money to have eight in their address or on their license plate. She said that I am lucky to be surrounded so much by the eight."

Hubba Hubba first called me on the sixty-fourth (eight times eight) day of my finding the  eight of spades at the entrance to the truck stop.   It was January 6 - The Epiphany - a date celebrated by Christians and Orthodox Jews as the last of the twelve days of Christmas. Hubba Hubba told me he was at a crossroads in his life. He had downsized his fleet of trucks, preparing for semi-retirement. He announced he had eight motorcycles. 

January 31, 2006, I took a break from packaging Soul Gifts for advance readers. I retreated to the bathtub to read. I smiled to myself as I thought of something Hubba Hubba had said to me. I massaged my legs instead of reading. I found a swelling at the back of my left knee area. I had had a massive cancer in the opposite leg four years earlier; the swelling received my full attention.
 
I asked a friend that afternoon, "Garda, is that a lump?"She felt it.  "Yes.  I don’t have a bad feeling from it though."

I left a message at the surgeon’s office. The next day I was on his examining table. He felt the lump too. He booked a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Another friend offered touch therapy.  I accepted. 

"Hubba Hubba," I said, "this lump makes me feel like I have joined you in the circle where the crossroads meet. I have felt vulnerable around you. I need to think of things from your perspective, not just my own."

When Hubba Hubba left for a three-week vacation in February, I tucked the eight of spades into his copy of Soul Gifts.  While he traveled, I draped the dining room with plastic, dug out my acrylics and brushes and bought a large canvas.  I created (Circle at The)  Crossroads.
Hubba Hubba hiked in New Mexico. I had my MRI.  A couple of days later I emailed him, "I am fine.  I don’t have cancer."

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