Image by Processingly on Unsplash

Narrated by: Diane Dobry

SERENDIPITY

There have been several times in my life when I wanted something, and a serendipitous experience brought it to me. Years ago, when the internet was only dial-up and laptops were new beepers were the way of reaching someone right away, I made a wish list of things I wanted—wrote it in my diary—which included a laptop. I didn’t have the money for one or knowledge of how to get one, but one day aco-worker emailed me saying he had a friend selling a laptop with a variety of programs on it for only $350. He did not know I wanted one. So I wrote it down and it came to me.

Even before that time, I would imagine changing my Cape Cod style house into a two-story colonial. I would push my son on a swing in the backyard and look at the house and picture in my mind what I wanted it to look like. I pictured where the windows would go and how the rooms could be arranged. But we had no funds to do it. I just kept picturing it every time I looked at the house.

My in-laws sold their house and moved to Florida soon after that and unexpectedly gave us a gift that allowed us to start making those changes. Years later, I was in the backyard looking at the house and I realized the house now fit that vision I had of it when my son was a toddler and I was pushing him on the swing imagining the changes.

This was not the only time I envisioned a home. AS a teenager, I collected magazine clippings of homes and rooms that I liked. One photo I cut out was of a Victorian home that had a large front porch and several large bay windows on the front and sides of the house. About 40 years later I found myself living in a house in upstate New York that looked very much like the photo. I did not seek it out, and I almost had no choice in what house I could live in at the time, since I was offered a job and this was one of only a couple of places I could find to live in. And it happened to be one just like a house I had admired in photos in my younger days. It felt like home to me when I lived there.