Sharon Fiffer
Some people don’t believe in good luck.
“People make their own luck,” is what my mother Nellie would say. “Hard work is what makes people lucky.”
Those sentiments never stopped her from dropping to her knees when she saw a patch of clover in her lawn (or anyone else’s lawn for that matter ) and hunting for four-leaf clovers.
We could chalk this up as just one more of Nellie’s oddball quirks had it not been for the fact that nine times out of ten, down on all fours, she’d call out over her shoulder to whoever she was with, “Found one.” Coming out of her crouch, she’d straighten up and brandish a clover with four, count ‘em, four leaves.
Well into her eighties, Nellie still hunkered down, always searching the ground for what others rarely saw.
If you research the rarity of these clover aberrations, you will find that until 2017, the odds of finding a four-leaf clover in a clover patch were believed to be one in ten thousand. In 2017, a study revised the odds to one in five thousand, still a long shot.
Nellie was not up to date on archival preservation. She saved her clovers by anchoring them to a piece of paper with plenty of scotch tape. She gave them to her children and her grandchildren, sometimes putting them inside store-bought birthday cards.
Once, when she was visiting, we had lunch at a pancake house and as we were leaving, I saw a woman I knew. I introduced Rochelle to my mother and without hesitation, Nellie fished a taped-up four-leaf clover out of her purse and handed it to her. “Hang on to that, it’ll bring you good luck,” she said and continued to walk toward the exit. Rochelle nodded, looked at me a little confused but quite pleased, and said she’d keep it forever.
In the car I asked why she had given the clover and reminded her that she didn’t believe in luck.
“I don’t know. Maybe I do believe in luck now. I keep finding the damn things, don’t I?”
Four months ago, I was in California and I pointed out a patch of clover to my granddaughters. “My mother, your great-grandmother, used to find four-leaf clovers all the time,” I told the girls.”
“We know that,” said Rose, “Dad always tells us that.” She stared into the clover patch.
“Like this one?” asked Rose, reaching into the green and holding up a perfect four- leaf clover in front of my astonished eyes.
