Norse Mythology? Really?

I have been to two fortunetellers in my life, both times at (spoiler alert, lameness ahead) a renaissance faire. Awesome, right? And even though I'm sure they used at least some amount of cold reading techniques on me, I have to say it was entertaining to speak with both of them. Since we've embarked on our first cycle of IVF, which has a maddeningly inscrutable 50-50 rate of success or failure according to my RE's statistics, I have thought back on their words for some clue about what the future holds. Oh, I know it's silly, but at least it's keeping me entertained while I wait around for real answers.

Fortuneteller #1 read tarot cards for me when I was 16 or so. I wanted to know the usual: when will my crush and I finally get together!?! She didn't have a specific time frame for that development, but I do remember that at some crucial point during the reading she flipped over a card and it was The Star. She told me this meant that I had a special talent, and if I followed it, I would have a career that made me happy as well as a husband and children and prosperity and good health and a long life. Great advice for a 16-year-old, right?

Fortuneteller #2 was much more recent, and much more specific. Two summers ago, when my friends and I were done eating turkey legs and they went off to buy some souvenirs, I said that I would rather spend my $20 having my fortune told. This time, there were no tarot cards. I waited for a moment outside the woman's tent while she finished with the last customer, and then I remember it being really awkward as I walked in and sat down because she was looking off in the distance and not acknowledging my entrance. Abruptly, she turned to me and said "You will have a daughter, and I see her - I don't know what this means - but she's a valkyrie." I must have looked suitably confused, because she went on to say that she didn't know why that word was so strongly associated with my daughter, but she saw it clearly. I didn't really know how to respond so I sort of smiled politely and we moved on to other topics (which was actually really creepy, she told me a lot that was true about my siblings and my job and I don't know how she could have possibly guessed all that just from looking at me.) And then I promptly forgot about the whole thing until we started IVF, and I began obsessing about children and whether I could have them, and part of me wants to type this all up now and put it on the Internet with a timestamp just so that in twenty years when my daughter has finished Valkyrie Training School™ I can prove that the fortuneteller's vision was correct.

Except, of course, that the odds of that happening are very low indeed. First of all, we have no guarantee that I will ever have children, and even if I do, who knows if I'll have a girl? Will I have only one girl, or a few to choose from, or perhaps one girl among several boys? Will I adopt, and could I deliberately make the fortune come true by seeking out a female baby with Nordic heritage and raising her among lots of ravens and horses and battlefields? I guess I should be glad that two years ago, long before any of this was on my mind, the message I got from beyond was that motherhood was in my future - the fortuneteller could have said "Oh, hello, nice to meet you, you will never have children." I'd rather have false hope in a happy future than none at all... I think.