Some people live life with a touch of magic. In my family, that magic belonged to two women: my Granny and my Mom. They were so different and yet shared an uncanny gift for making the impossible seem downright ordinary.

Granny had her own brand of enchantment, one that I still can’t quite explain. She had a “magic” prayer, passed down from her father, that could make warts disappear. The ritual itself was simple. She would take your hand, rub the wart gently, and lean in close, whispering words so soft and secretive that you could barely catch the hum of them. By the next day, the wart was gone.

What exactly she whispered remains a mystery to me. Granny was bound by an old tradition: she could only pass the prayer to a male member of the family. I’d ask her what it was, and she’d smile that sly, knowing smile of hers, shrugging it off like it was no big deal. “You’ll have to ask one of the boys,” she’d say. But, of course, none of the boys were paying attention.

While Granny worked her quiet magic, Mom’s gift was different, but just as unexplainable. Mom had what I like to call supernatural intuition. With seven children of her own and more than 25 grandchildren, she could predict the date, weight, and sex of every new baby before they arrived.

It didn’t matter what the doctors or ultrasounds said; if Mom made a prediction, you could count on it. Once, a sonogram confidently declared my sister’s baby would be a girl. Mom shook her head with absolute certainty. “Nope. It’s a boy.” And, of course, she was right.

When I was pregnant with my son, I couldn’t resist asking for her prediction. She gave it with a smile: “It’ll be a boy, and he’ll be late, February 4th to be exact, and he will be a big baby, 9 lbs’4 ½ inches! NOT January like the doctors think.” At the time, I chalked it up to her usual confidence. But sure enough, my son arrived precisely when Mom said he would, a healthy, perfect little boy.

Today is his birthday as a matter fact, so Happy Birthday my sweet Kyle!

Granny’s secret prayer and Mom’s intuition felt like threads in the same magical tapestry. They never claimed to have special powers, Granny called her prayer a “blessing,” and Mom would just laugh off her predictions, but there was something extraordinary about the way they connected to the world.

Now that they’re both gone, I sometimes wonder if I inherited even a sliver of their gifts. I’ll never know Granny’s whispered words, and my intuition isn’t quite as sharp as Mom’s. But their stories remind me that a little mystery, a little magic, and a lot of love can make life something to marvel at.

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