Oakdale Ink
March 2025: Luck
“A lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.”- Jane Austen, Emma
“Springs Luck” by Makenna Wogan
For if I pray, or if I wish,
To feel the warmth of his sweet kiss,
A breath of air, a fleeting glance,
Could turn my world, don’t take a chance.
I blow the candles, seventeen,
My somber mind, a great big sea
Washed up, a kid in the grass
Brand new shoes, upper class
To dream of luck, run of the mill
A day of reality, another pill
A play to act but no, she's grown
Good riddance she should've known
“Luck”
You’re lucky.
I remember those words like they are engraved in my mind, burning behind my eyes. The way my mother whispered them to me that night, while I cried on the phone until the first rays of morning light broke through my shutters.
There were many things those words could mean. Many ways I, myself, have depicted them. But am I really lucky? Lucky that we fought? Lucky that my car didn’t start? Lucky that I didn’t go with you? Lucky that I didn’t die with you?
I think I am. I feel like I should feel like I am. But instead feel like it is my fault. All of it.
Why ever should luck favor me over you?
You deserved the world, even after everything. I still loved you. I never wanted any of this to happen. Not after the lies, not after our fight, not after I stormed out.
How selfish I was, to run off into the rainy night, tears streaming down my eyes. But, by chance of luck, my car refused to start that night. I called it bad luck and screamed believing God above must delight in tormenting me. In many ways he does, but in this moment I was graced by luck.
You appeared at my window, tapping on the glass. You begged me to come back inside, to not leave it like this. I wouldn’t listen.
Stepping out of the car I slipped past you, taking off into the night like a scared runaway. I don’t even know where I was going, but I had to get away. I ran and ran down streets while your panicked voice called after me.
In that moment I told myself I wouldn’t go back, I wouldn’t look back, would never forgive you for kissing her.
But if it meant you’d be alive today, I would trade all my luck.
The luck that I wasn’t in the car with you, in any car in fact, on the dark rainy night as you drove over to that damned homecoming dance we were supposed to be going to together.
That’s what my mother told me.
I was lucky.
Because I could have been in the car with you when that drunk driver ran the red light. I could’ve still loved you. And I would’ve died with you.
“1 in 3”
“Columbia is 4.2%, Georgetown is 13.1%.” I rattled off the list to my mom beside me. She nodded her head in acknowledgement with her lips pursed, not glancing in my direction, but instead staring straight ahead of her out of the window of the doctor’s office.
“Better wish for good luck then.” She muttered as if her mind was elsewhere.
I had always thought luck was a myth, something that undeserving people who didn’t work hard for the things in life made up. For me, life was clean and simple. You work yourself to the bone, each second of every day, and success is inevitable. You fill your life with challenge after challenge. Each day, AP Classes, mock trial, my internship at a law firm, and SAT prep consumed each piece of me, until there was a mindless drone cramming 18 hours of work into a 24 hour day. Work hard, and you will succeed.
As I distracted myself with the acceptance rates and the financial aid amounts and the graduation rates, the doctor entered the room and drew a chair to sit in front of us.
“The lab results came back,” He began, a look of slight pity on his face.
But as the words hit me, I knew I was wrong, I knew luck was real.
“The survival rate is 1 in 3, I’m sorry.” The man in the white coat stared down at his clipboard, as if each day he told 17 year old girls they were dying.
I knew luck was real, because nothing but pure bad luck would have forced the words 1 in 3 chance out of the emotionless doctor.
“No,” I choked out. “That can’t be true.”
It couldn’t have been for nothing. Sacrificing the last three years of my life for success. The three years of watching my classmates go to parties, their smiles haunting each corner of my mind, while I studied endlessly, never taking breaks, never taking a moment to breathe, all for the supposed future I had ahead of me.
“I’m afraid it is.” He said with a tight lipped expression. “However, there are methods of treatments-”
As he began to rattle on about chemotherapy, about switching to online school, all I could do was stare at my ink-stained hands. My fingers gripped the rubber hospital bench, the sounds of my mother sobs drowning out his voice.
The next three months passed. The season changed, but I didn’t notice. The tree visible from my hospital bed turned from green to an auburn color, and eventually lost its leaves. None of it seemed to matter as I felt myself withering away.
The worst part of it all wasn’t the fact I was dying. It wasn’t my family's reactions as I slipped further into sickness. Because truthfully, there wasn’t much of my life to miss. There wasn’t a life to begin with.
It was a cycle of sleepless nights and endless work. No genuine joy or passion, only the endless drive to accomplish something.
No, the worst part wasn’t that I was dying. It was that it was all for nothing.
As my mom intertwined her fingers with mine, I simply stared at the ceiling, listening to the monitor beep.
“When you were born,” She started with a shaky breath, “You were so interested in everything happening around you. You wanted to know everything this world had to offer. But you got the endless drive of your father, that endless longing of success.” Her tone made it clear it wasn’t an insult, but instead she sounded like a person who had lost everything. Her hand pushed back the hair on my forehead.
I felt like I was already dead, like I had died years ago along with my passion. Because that was truly what I had lost. Ambition and drive had replaced any passion I had.
“You’re going to survive this,” My mother said more to herself than to me. “You’re going to survive this, and you’re going to begin living.”
With that word, I finally met her eyes. I studied her face, which was covered in wrinkles and deep smile lines. She had graying brown hair and eyes that although brown, seem to hold all the color in the world. Looking at her, she seemed like a person you’d never forget, a person that had experienced all that life had to offer. A person that had lived.
She looked like me, with the same hair and eyes, except mine were soulless, and my hair was close to gone.
“Mom,” I looked up at her. “I want to be beautiful, like you. I want to- to look like I’ve lived. Like I’ve done something with my life.”
“You will,” She assured me, a look of deep pity crossing her face. When the look on my face didn’t fade, she added, “Your hair is like the autumn leaves. Just because they might be gone, and the world may be cold and bleak, that doesn’t mean the sun won’t come again.”
Letting my eyes close, I willed it to be true. I willed the sun to peek over the horizon and light my life.
Months passed and the seasons changed once more, and as spring came the tree regained its green leaves. Sun poured in from the window, and crossed my face. My eyes flittered open and a smile creeped across my face, where smile lines had begun to form.
My mother stood over me, a suitcase packed up behind her. She extended her hand to me as I rose out of bed.
“Are you ready?” She beamed, a true smile crossing her face for the first time in what felt like years.
I nodded, and as I left the hospital that day and headed home, I knew what my life's purpose was. It wasn’t ambition or success or wealth. It was to live. To experience all that life had to offer.
I believed in luck because I had a 1 in 3 chance, yet I had beat the odds.