Serendipity

Last week the DMV enjoyed unseasonably mild weather, including some 80° days.

Call me crazy but this certainly isn’t the March Lion I’m accustomed to.

It was against this backdrop that I decided to take an hour or two to venture out to the bookstore and write Alli’s Two Cents. The Muse had graciously stopped by earlier so I thought I’d put the finishing touches on her musings while sitting at an outside table soaking up the sun and enjoying WiFi.

I ran into a friend who was also meeting a friend so a bit of my time was co-opted. But I wasn’t mad. I’ve come to see life’s serendipitous moments like these as blessings and just take them in stride.

Before I knew it, though, it was getting late (still getting used to Daylight Savings Time) and I needed to get some food home for dinner. As I walked up the steps to the house, I juggled the mail along with all my other stuff – takeout, laptop, purse, etc. It was then that I noticed a letter with an Oklahoma return address that made me smile.

First of all, it’s not often that we get handwritten notes and letters these days so that was enough to make my eyes twinkle. But when I noticed who it was from, I got really excited!

You see, I have been getting letters from this return address since 1975 when I was about 10 years old in the fifth grade.

It was about that time that me and a little girl named Patty Urbina (later Moakley) would serendipitously write in to a television show called Big Blue Marble requesting a pen pal.

Big Blue Marble was one of those educational television shows that I wish I could say my Mom the Teacher made me watch. My dorky self, however, actually liked it.  Every week the show took us on a journey to what seemed like an exotic, foreign land where we would see how other children lived and learn about other cultures. In this way, we would see that what felt like a huge planet was merely a “big blue marble” when viewed from outer space and we are all more alike than different.

Another way they encouraged us to learn about other cultures was to write in for a pen pal so we could get to know one another on an individual basis.

Y’all know that had me all over it! J

Imagine my surprise, however, when my cultural match arrived from….Watonga, Oklahoma! I was like, “Oklahoma?! That’s not exotic! That’s the United States!”

Little did I know that this would spawn a 35 year friendship that included pages and pages of notebook paper filled with talk about school, boys, and teenage angst that eventually gave way to college, marriage, and children. I still have boxes of letters, pictures, and t-shirts that say we are true sisters, all without ever laying eyes on each other.

That is until a serendipitous encounter in Oklahoma back in 1992 while I was attending a conference as an exhibitor for an education foundation.

Initially, the trip seemed less than stellar – it was in October during Oktoberfest and I was the only African American within a 100 mile radius. On the cab ride from the airport, we drove past Oral Roberts University with these ginormous metal praying hands out in front and fields filled with actual bales of hay. The icing on the cake was that the colleague I was travelling with wanted to go line dancing at a country bar we spotted on our way in. I told her under no certain terms that I would NOT be going line dancing in anybody’s country bar in anybody’s No Man’s Land/No Black People, Oklahoma.

Oddly enough, the keynote speaker at this conference was Alex Haley. I “just so happened” to have just finished re-reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X and couldn’t believe I was in the same hotel with an absolute living legend! I looked up during breakfast the next day and there he was at the table next to mine! I got stage fright, though, and didn’t introduce myself. I wish I had, however, because he would make his transition just a few short months later.

Serendipity.

Anyway, during our first day exhibiting, an attendee walked past my booth with a badge that said she was from Patty’s hometown of Watonga. I greeted her with an exuberant smile and mentioned that I had a pen pal from Watonga and she asked me her name. When I told her, she replied, “Oh, honey, I know her Mama. I’ll call her during our next break.” (Cell phones were rare in those days!).

The next morning Patty and her husband Bill drove two hours just to have breakfast with me! To them, no distance was too far and no time too short if it meant we got to meet face-to-face after what had been a mere 18 years of writing!

So fast forward to last week when I saw the letter from Patty’s mom and I got really excited! Maybe, I thought, they’re planning some kind of surprise celebration for her and want to give me plenty of time to plan to attend. After all these years, we’ll get to see each other again and she’ll get to meet Drew!

So me and my juggling scurry in the door, get things settled, and I open the letter. Out tumbled a newspaper clipping with her picture and a note from her mother that began, “It breaks my heart to tell you this but I know I must…”

Even though I didn’t have my very necessary 1.50 readers on, I knew something wasn’t right.

It seems that my dear pen pal died suddenly in February even though, her mother assured me, “The doctors really did all they could…”

I did find my readers and the news was right there in black and white but somehow, through my tears, it just didn’t seem to compute.

Still hasn’t.

As I sit here a week later, my eyes still tear up as I think about how miraculously serendipitous it was that Patty and I crossed paths all those years ago and that we got to meet that one time. I also think it is incredibly generous and gracious of God to bless us with such a richly woven tapestry of friendship and for that I am so very grateful.

Just yesterday I went to grab a miscellaneous stack of papers (my hand to God) and I found the last letter Patty wrote to me in November 2011. I knew we had written recently but it was just one of those reminders that catch your breath. In it she tried to, “catch me up,” as she put it because, alas, our days of writing pages and pages have not survived grown up, hectic life.  But she closed noting that she couldn’t believe that we had been writing each other for over 30 years and, “I am so blessed that you continue to share your life with me. You will forever be in my heart and I love you, sis!”

I would like to take this space to honor her memory and share my love and prayers with her husband, mother, and beautiful son.

I wish for all of you rich, loving friendships and relationships that you can cherish even though it hurts when they change.

And remain aware and alert - you never know when serendipity will stop on over, sit on your shoulder, and bless you beyond your wildest imaginings.