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Highlands Today

Into Every Life Some Serendipity Falls

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By Joyce Minor | Highlands Today

Published: May 17, 2008

This thing we call life is amazing.

We rush around, so driven by the urgency of the mundane, we often miss little miracles that happen all around us every day. But, now and then, things come together in a manner too serendipitous to be random.

It's strange and spooky … and wonderful.

"The exact amount of money you desperately need arrives out of nowhere just in the nick of time.

"You turn around and run into someone you were just thinking about who, otherwise, hasn't crossed your mind, or your path, in years.

"You drop a coin, stoop to pick it up, and in that momentary pause, a car speeds past so close it would certainly have hit you, had you not dropped that coin.

We all occasionally have similar experiences. But once or twice in every life there comes a time when events, seemingly random and meaningless, somehow weave together like threads in a tapestry, delivering a picture message so powerful and poetic, it's as if the finger of God reached down and wrote on the wall of your life.

When my oldest daughter was a freshman in high school, we moved to Texas, more than a thousand miles from everyone we knew.

Erin joined the high school marching band, so "Mom" joined the Band Boosters and dutifully trotted off to the first meeting. Two hundred other parents, all strangers, filled the room. Rows of chairs lined three walls, so when I took a seat I found myself facing another mother, seated straight across from me.

I smiled. She smiled. And I knew immediately. We'd grown up together in a small Michigan town a thousand miles away. I had not seen or heard from her in 25 years.

To tell the truth, I don't think I'd even thought about her in 25 years. We were never close friends in school, even though there had always been one special connection between us. She was the only other person in my class with the same last name.

Everyone assumed we were related, perhaps cousins. But the relationship was in name, and confusion, only. It meant our names were always in succession when teachers called the role, and more than once I was marked absent by mistake. We were often seated next to each other in class, and our academic records were forever getting mixed up. Consequently, we became sort of friendly adversaries, intentionally keeping each other at a distance whenever possible. The last time I'd seen her was when we marched, side by side, into graduation.

Now, as the Band Boosters meeting ended, I walked straight across the room and stood looking at her. "Hello, Cheryl."

She looked puzzled. "Hello …"

"It is Cheryl. Right?"

"Yes …"

"Cheryl Donaldson? Right?"

"Yes, that was my maiden name."

I smiled. "And you graduated from high school in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, Class of 19----"

She laid a finger on my lips. "And so did you … Joyce." She grinned. "Joyce Donaldson. Right?"

I nodded, fighting to keep a straight face. "Yes, that was my maiden name."

We laughed and hugged and wound up in a coffee shop swapping hometown stories for the next two hours.

It turned out Cheryl's son was the drum major and Cheryl was the VP of the Band Boosters. For the next four years, she had one loyal right-hand assistant she could always count on. And both of us were a little less homesick for Michigan.

Serendipity.

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