Last week as I drove down my street, a black cat crossed my path and I told myself I had better be careful that day. This same black cat had been prowling around for some time and often he would run across my driveway as I was pulling in at night. This suggested that I have been jinxed, perhaps since birth, and am preordained to have bad luck.

My family always summered in Maine where our grandparents lived and I can recall sunny days sitting on their sprawling front lawn next to my grandmother as she rocked away in her rocking chair. She would often say: “Tommy, I don’t know why, but if there is a cloud in the sky, it will find its way to us and start to rain.”

As an innocent child I was not sure what to make of that statement, but it may account for why I became attracted to the profession of psychotherapy. Listening to the bad luck stories from Grandmother taught me how to remain neutral and even upbeat in the face of depression.

My grandmother led a privileged life of comfort and luxury, but nonetheless she felt she was unlucky. Perhaps she felt unlucky to be a woman.

Many have an interest in the concept of luck. There are many objects believed to contain luck or the lack thereof. Unlucky things include the number 13, black cats, walking under ladders and breaking a mirror. Thankfully, there are several lucky things to counterbalance this woe. These intrepid warriors include the number 7, the four-leaf clover, a horseshoe and the rabbit’s foot. Mickey Mantle and David Beckham both used the number 7 on their uniforms.

My brother David, the youngest in our family, leads a lucky life. David, who we nicknamed “The Maven,” has always been the master of good fortune. First, he had blond hair and good looks. That’s lucky right there. I recall once when he was a wee lad of 12 and living in Florida (my parents retired early and moved south), he had just been bought an ice cream cone and as he was outside the ice cream parlor, he dropped his cone onto the sidewalk.

Now if that had happened to any other kid, they would cry and go home. But The Maven just walked back into the shop, flashed a smile, and explained to the owner he had dropped his cone. Voila, he got a new cone even bigger than the first one and the owner seemed happy that all this happened. This is what you call good karma.

A good angel is always hanging around David. As he gets older, he gets better looking and just on a lark, he became a clothes model for a while. He then got serious and went on to become a doctor. On his first summer after his schooling, he went to Italy for a rest, met a beautiful Italian girl, got married and set up his practice in Padua, which is just outside of Venice.

His wife got pregnant, had a luminescent child named Lucia who looks like Marilyn Monroe. They had a second girl, Chiara, who looks better than Lucia if that’s even possible, and they both grew up to be heartbreakers. His practice grew, life is abundant. Recently, David “The Maven” flew back to the United States because he and his best friend, filmmaker John Bifar, have just produced a documentary film and they had to attend its premier. This may all sound like a fiction, but I assure you, it is not.

Yes, indeed, David “The Maven” Ferraro, our youngest sibling, has the luck of the Irish even though he’s Italian. So why is it that he is so lucky? My older brother Peter explains it in the following way. David “The Maven,” had blonde hair and was the youngest in the family. He therefore had access to our father’s unconditional love and attention. Dad retired early, had time to kill and thus had the energy to heap love onto the golden-haired boy. David was the love object or one who receives unconditional love.

Peter is a writer and not a psychologist, but he may have been paying attention when he took that compulsory Psych 101 course and they reviewed Alfred Adler. Adler was one of the founders of psychoanalysis and discussed the influence of birth order on personality. He pointed out that the youngest in the family will often have the following lucky traits.

1) They get away with murder. (Refer back to the ice cream incident with David.)
2) The youngest tend to enjoy being the center of attention. (David did modeling and now does film.)
3) They are confident.
4) They are social and outgoing and often charismatic. (that’s David)

Being the youngest in the family is a lucky thing, but beware because if you lean on luck, it tends to disappear over time. Good luck comes from good parenting plus hard work. Bad luck probably comes from lack of good parenting or from neglect. Karma, luck, destiny, kismet and randomness are a part of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Shallow men believe in luck or circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”

As I finished typing this column, that black cat walked past my window once again. The universe is sending me a message and to that I say what Tennessee Williams once said: “Luck is believing you’re lucky.” In fact, I believe that despite that evil black cat outside my window, I knock on wood and say yes, I do know that I’m a lucky man. Maybe not as lucky as David, but that’s OK, too.