Sonntagskind

I learned today that I can kill vampires with my urine or saliva. 

I was going to write about how grumpy I get when people call me lucky because I work hard for some of this luck. But then I remembered that I am lucky. Luck comes from the German gluck (I don't know how to write umlauts), which means happy or good fortune.

All of that German got me thinking about when my friends called me "Sonntagskind" in Europe after college. I worked enough temp jobs to buy airfare over and back, then I relied on the hospitality of friends for the rest. 

Oh my. I am queen of mooching, but this took it to a whole new level. It did fall in place and that's how I got the name Sonntagskind. I have enough German to know it means "Sunday child" but I didn't realize what all that meant.

According to the great source Wikipedia, it originally referred to someone born on the sabbath (Saturday). A Sonntagskind in folklore was able to:

1. See or smell demonic creatures
2. Destroy vampires with urine or saliva (I had to put that in twice because it's so fabulous)
3. Foresee death (This is the gift that got children born on Saturdays ostracized from their villages. Who wants to know when they are going to die?)
4. Bring luck or predict winning lottery numbers

So I was able to mooch my way across Europe relying on friends and friends of friends. My favorite memory was in Budapest where I stayed with a Hungarian family twice removed from my friends in Germany. I ended up teaching English in the university and spending the afternoon on a hill of green grass with some twenty-somethings talking about life. 

The mom wanted to make me a traditional Hungarian meal. It was fried chicken. Amazing, but I didn't tell her that my grandma's was better.

The coming together of that experience was luck, but it was not easy. I spent four hours wandering Budapest looking for their apartment with a fifty pound backpack on. My luck comes packaged with some resilience and willingness to risk. 

I suppose that's why it bothers me when folks call me lucky. I am lucky, but I have never had an adventure placed before me without effort on my part.

My kids don't hike for miles by some spontaneous magical force of nature. I have dragged their booties out into the woods from the moment they were born, playing games, singing songs, and pretending I was Donkey in Shrek. They know this is what our family does and it is magical in its own way.

I plan my life out months in advance so I can figure out ways to sneak in recreation and breaks. Spontaneity is not easy to pull off with three kids. 

The idea of luck seems to dismiss the effort involved in adventures. 

Or it could just press the memory button of when I had whupped the one I love at cribbage repeatedly and he said, "The guys all say it's luck." He would still be removing cards from an orifice if I didn't love my decks of cards so much.

But luck, whatever that means, plays into life just like it does cards.

I had to look it up to see if I truly was a Sonntagskind. Yep, February 13, 1971 was a Saturday so if you are a vampire watch out.