A chance meeting in time and space

Once, about 10 years ago, I had a terrific young female friend. Just a friend, despite the fact she was as cute as two buttons in a row. But, she was a lot younger than I was, had two tiny kids, had just come out of a very nasty divorce, and was a rising young TV producer. In other words, she was at a different place in her life.

But, we cherished the presence of each other and had a wonderful older brother and sister, or uncle and niece kind of relationship. I lived where I did, and she lived in a different city, but during the days we were both romantically unattached we would bunk down at each other’s place when either one or the other of us was in our respective towns. No hanky-panky other than warm hugs and kisses on the cheek transpired. It was just a wonderful loving friendship at many levels.

“Your ex-wife thinks we’re lovers,” she told me over coffee one morning when I was staying at her place.

“I’m flattered she would think that,” I replied. “How do you know she thinks that?”

“Because she’s a good friend of my ex-mother in law. She also said you were a male slut, so she wouldn’t be surprised if we were having an affair.”

“I don’t know how flattered I am by the ‘slut’ appellation, but whatever turns her crank, I guess. I don’t like the implied insult to you, however.”

“That’s OK. My ex’s mother hates me so she'd want to think the worst of me.”

Anyway, that was the sort of relationship she and I had, and we both loved it. Eventually, we both linked up with other people and, being separated by geography, we drifted apart; lost each other’s respective phone numbers, emails, etc, and I would periodically get little twinges of angst that told me I might never see her again.

But, enter synchronicity. This morning I went for a long walk to meet up with Wendy for lunch. She is working in the same city my friend lives in, and I’ll also be living here part time. As I walked along the street I noticed up ahead a young couple with a baby in a stroller. They had stopped to tend to the infant, and I headed out to go past them. As I passed, the woman looked up and smiled. I stopped in my tracks.

“April?”

“It’s Ian,!” she exclaimed.

And, it was she. And just like that we reconnected after nearly a decade.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to find a way to get in touch with you,” she said.

“Same with me,” I replied. “I’d almost resigned myself to never seeing you again, and I thought that would be so sad.”

“Me too,” she said.

So, we exchanged emails and phone numbers, and I found that she lives literally a block away from where I now live part of the time. I feel quite awestruck.

I also am coming to believe more and more in synchronicity. My meeting with April represents the third such episode in a little over a month. The first was the meeting with my old landlord in England, and how he had found the cartoons I had drawn 25 years before on just the same day I arrived on his doorstep.

The second involves my reconnection with my old friend, John, who lives in Australia but just happened to be in the same city I was to be visiting two weeks ago.

And the final one is my meeting with April this morning. I mean, what are the odds? I could have left home 10 minutes earlier this morning, or could have chosen another route. So could she have. But, both parties left at the time they did and chose the route they did.

I am choosing to believe that was meant to be.