Coincidences

Of course I believe in coincidences – they happen. I also believe that I mostly make up my own meanings.

The story – and it’s not dramatic and not really that interesting, except maybe to me – begins with me mowing the lawn yesterday morning. I saw a bit of aluminum at the edge of the grass and realized that it must be a piece from one of my windmobiles. I looked up and, sure enough, the mobile, with its rusty wires and aluminum vanes, was hanging out of balance from the top of its pole, in the flowers, this vane and a slender length of rusty wire had broken off and fallen.

Only a few yesterdays more ago, I had explained to someone about making these mobiles some many years ago and how, in the weather - with the rain and the constant moving at the joints from the wind - the wires on this mobile drifting in the breeze would wear through just like on the other mobile near the pond with elements hanging awkwardly.

And now that someone and her family are thousands of miles away in Russia, a piece of glinting aluminum at the edge of the grass merely a reminder of things that happen.

It means something to me that we met, these people becoming friends. It might not have happened that way, but it did. I will need to fix this windmobile – and the one by the pond – before they get back. Connecting to people is more than coincidence – if not much more, sometimes.

And now sometimes a dandelion will remind me of her two girls. But that’s another story I’ll tell myself sometimes. There’s a photo of them that crossed the ocean on a slender wire in which they sit in a field full of tall dandelion heads. Just a breath and the fluff will fly. Like vanes on a rusty mobile.

Of course I believe in coincidences.