Strange Coincidences

Last night I had one of the most surreal evenings I’ve had in a long, long time. A friend of ours is visiting from London, and she came over to see us before she heads back across the pond on Friday. At first the plan was to make dinner at home, but my RRHB wasn’t interested in making pizza and salad for a guest, so we went out.

I was so tired (gasp! me! tired! shocking, I know) and grumpy from working (not being the job makes me grumpy but because it was a bit too much yesterday) that the last thing I wanted to do was go out for dinner. I wanted to kick back in my sweats and hang out for some old fashioned gossip with Elyssa.

Annnywaaay. We went to a local restaurant called Mitzi’s Sister. Just as we sat down, I noticed a couple of cute kids playing and thought, “it’s nice to see families out in the neighbourhood.” Then I didn’t give them another thought. We started our conversation in earnest, discussing our days with Elyssa and chatting about Mitzi’s Sister when I heard someone say, “Ragdoll? Is that you? I recognized your voice!”

Well, it was Mark, this fellow my RRHB and I went to high school with. In fact, one of the greatest memories I have of high school is watching Mark and my crazy ex-boyfriend playing imaginary snap (with no cards) at my kitchen table at my fifteenth birthday party with my grandmother. My grandmother loved Mark and always talked about how handsome he was. I don’t know if he ever knew that.

So he says to me, “Holly’s been looking for you!” Now, Holly was one of my closest friends in high school, in grades nine and ten there was a group of us who were pretty much inseparable, and she and I spent a lot of time together. But as these things go, you grow up, people move away and you don’t see them anymore. But every now and again, I’d run into someone who’d say, “Oh, I saw Holly and she wondered how you were,” and we just never connected. So, I gave Mark my card, we all chatted for a bit (it was his lovely family I noticed) and we went on with our dinner.

Until five minutes later when Holly, beautiful Holly, showed up at the restaurant. It was magical, wonderful and truly one of the most surprising evenings I’ve had in a long time. I haven’t seen her in probably close to fifteen years and it was so absolutely fantastic to see her again. In fact, the “reunion” of old friends has been quite a trend in my life lately. Just the other weekend, Zesty and I had brunch with some of our other old high school friends who we haven’t seen in forever, and that was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time too.

And it got me thinking that the universe is an extremely powerful thing. Holly had been thinking a lot about being a mom and all the stuff that happened to me just before I got to high school (my mom’s car accident), and wanted to see me. Then, we find out that we live within blocks of each other and her cousin actually lives around the corner from me and my RRHB.

But also that I’ve been having an extremely hard year with the disease and trying to get healthy, and I think the world is sending all this wonderful stuff my way just to let me know that everything’s going to be okay. And the best thing is hearing about other people’s memories, how it makes you think of things that your mind had long forgotten (apparently, I was a fried egg for Halloween one year, heh!). But most importantly it’s to remember that there was a reason you were drawn to these people in the first place and that energy doesn’t go away despite living in different places, days, months, even years passing, and it made me giddy just to sit there talking to her.

The world is truly a magical place.