The Prophecy at LAX

The moment that made me believe in more.

I stood at my gate anxiously awaiting the short flight back to SF. Maybe if I stare hard enough, the boarding time will change.

Since returning to work, Open has been flying my whole family to LA once a month for my weekend shoots. But Otis is 6 months old now, Greg is more than capable of being without me, and I feel mostly ready to go on my own. At least, I thought so—until I slid into the back of my Uber in the pitch-black darkness at 4:30 a.m. that Friday and felt my heart contort under a death grip of guilt, sadness, and fear.

I caved in on myself and wept as I handed my ID to the TSA agent. I sniffled my way through the entirety of the 45-minute flight. I took deep breaths and repeated, “Okay,” with every exhale while waiting for my Uber to take me to Venice. And then I arrived at the set and saw all my friends. My melancholy evaporated as my attention shifted, and I felt the familiar aliveness that comes with doing the work I love so much.

Aside from the quiet nights in my hotel, I was mostly able to tune out my longings for them. But as soon as the excitement ended and I once again found myself alone, the feelings burst through the dam of distraction and flooded my system.

Just as I was sinking deeper into sadness, I heard someone yelling and turned to see a large boy, probably in his early teens, rushing toward me with his arms flailing. He stops inches from my face and puts his hands on my belly—my very-not-pregnant belly, mind you. He continued to gleefully bounce and then got down low to put his ear to me, pausing his movement to listen. Instantly, he was ecstatic and shouted sounds I didn’t understand. He’d lift his face to mine to yell, then pop back down to my belly and listen. Moments later, his mother burst through the crowd at the gate, relieved to find him, and simultaneously mortified.

“I’m so sorry!” she said in her thick Russian accent. I laughed and told her it wasn’t a big deal, all the while her son kept rubbing my belly, now passing the message to her. She told me, “He wants to tell you, he can hear her heartbeat. He can hear a little girl's heartbeat. Are you pregnant?” I blushed, laughed again, and said, “No! Maybe he’s just hearing my heartbeat?” She apologized again and said something in Russian to her son. He shook his head vigorously and reaffirmed himself. She relayed the message, “He says no, it’s a little girl. I don’t know! HA! I’m sorry!”

I tried to diffuse her embarrassment by telling her that I have a son too, and how he runs away from me all the time! And it’s so hard being a parent!

I felt a little silly once the words left my mouth. I have no idea what it would be like to parent an autistic child. But she was gracious and appreciated my willingness to relate. She told me about being a single mother and how hard it is to navigate the world with a minimally verbal son. One that is now bigger and faster than her. All the while, he continued to rub my belly and smile at me. “He just loves babies,” she told me. Me too, I said to him, smiling.

I had forgotten all about this interaction until I was listening to the seventh episode of the Telepathy Tapes podcast. A father was recounting how his autistic child kept warning him of ice and how he would hurt his hip. The father explained that where they live in Arizona, there’s no black ice, so the likelihood of this prophecy felt low. But months later, while on a business trip, he leaves his hotel and slips on black ice. He ends up needing pins in his hip. He calls his wife from the hospital, and they are both understandably and utterly shocked.

I remember telling Greg about the boy at the airport as soon as I got home. It was haunting me. I knew for sure that I wasn’t pregnant. So… was this a prophecy? Was he predicting a little girl I would have? Or maybe, what if he was hearing the heartbeat of my miscarriage? Or my mid-twenties abortion? Was this the sound of another soul trapped in my body? And if so, did I need to do some type of ritual to set it free?

Greg, who was not at all interested in a second child at the time and perhaps thought I was trying to press the issue, barely looked up from his phone. “Mmmm, I doubt it,” he told me. He gave a similar response the other day when I relayed the hip injury story from the podcast. This time, though, he did look up, cocked his head to the side and furrowed his brow. “What? No way.”

I don’t fault him. I was the same skeptic before I started listening. My friend Maggie had sent the podcast in a text and told me it was blowing her mind. A must-listen. I’d heard of it before, but had also heard how it was debunked and lost interest in listening. I think it’s kind of sad how we do that. We almost wait with bated breath for the takedown of things that press the boundaries of our understanding or strongly held belief systems. Perhaps the superiority of knowing things to be bullshit is just too alluring—but really, it’s limiting, and maybe it’s also a bit lazy.

One of the most standout moments from this podcast came from the host. She said:

“Spellers need to be believed and trusted to allow their gifts to shine. If you’re open to receiving what they can do and what they might share, there’s just more they’ll share with you. Belief is important. And again, we all know this because of things like the placebo effect. The placebo effect is real! So there is evidence of efficacy, or a strong belief, changing what the mind or body is capable of doing.”

Now, I don’t write this to you to try and convince you that telepathy or prophetic gifts are real. You can believe whatever you want—that’s none of my business. I write this because I have a preoccupation with belief, or rather, my lack thereof. For the entirety of my life, it’s been a blinking billboard with neon lights in my mind’s eye, begging me to just BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. And it’s been especially persistent these last 8 months as I jumped off a cliff without a parachute, frantically building one as I free-fall into the unknown, all the while repeatedly muttering to myself, “This is fine.”

And here’s the part I didn’t tell you—and what I found so amusing: when I reminded Greg of the LAX prophecy and added the evidence of the hip injury story, he looked up at me to brush it off—all while feeding our 15-month-old daughter.

The boy was right after all. I did end up having a baby girl. And I believe with all my heart that Willa is who he heard that day.

Of course, at the time, I couldn’t make sense of it. I wasn’t pregnant. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be. But there he was—this boy I’d never met—pressing his ear to my belly, ecstatic, and grinning like he knew something I didn’t. And now I look at my daughter and wonder… how did he know? How did he find me in a crowd and know to listen?

I still don’t know what to make of it. Again, I’m not here to argue for magic or prophecy or anything else we can’t hold in our hands. But I keep thinking about what that podcast host said—how belief lets something open up, lets something shine through.

I am here mostly to remind myself that belief isn’t about being sure of anything. It’s just about making room for possibility and not needing to know for certain in order to listen.

(Scroll down to see the note I wrote myself right after meeting the boy and his mom. So I wouldn’t forget the moment, and I think, because I wanted to believe.)

The heartbeat he heard: Willa Frances 12/15/23

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