The Universe is a wise and powerful thing. Perhaps it’s what Frank Baum was referring to about the Great OZ. I’ve believed for a long time that it isn’t any one deity that runs things but the Universe that encompasses all things. The trick, my dear, is to pay attention and be open to it’s suggestions and directions.

I grew up in a small town in western North Carolina. A nice little town at the time. The late fifties and early sixties were an enchanting time to grow up in America. Life was ripping. Prosperity and the ease of living were freely given. We grew up with real values and people mattered.

There was a girl….isn’t how this always starts. From the fifth grade on, we shared a lot of classes. We grew up in adjacent neighborhoods. I played in an adjoining creek with her brothers, yet we hardly knew each other. We had a different circle of friends for most of our youth, but there had to be some connection on a subconscious level. She was cuter than hell and full of life. She dated my next door neighbor through high school. We even took the driving part of driver’s ed together.

College, life, love and the pursuit of the almighty dollar separated us for almost fifty years. She followed a boy to Vancouver, Canada and lived there for forty years. I had my own life to live… and I did.

So where and somehow, you’d have to ask her; she decided to come find me. I had moved back to our home town to be a little closer to aging family and perhaps, unknowingly, reconnect with youth. A mutual friend decided that the two us must reconnect. Our lives had been two peas in a pod. “This must happen” were the words spoken…. And it did. When I saw her name come across my phone screen from a text she sent, my mind flooded back almost 60 years and starting filling in gaps. As I said, there must have been an existential, subconscious connection all these years. Most of my girlfriends in the past mirrored some if not all of her looks and style. I know, I know; bullshit, right? Not if you’ve been paying attention to the Universe. So, like a bizarre, wonderful vision of so many Christmas’ past, she showed up at my campsite for a bike ride.

The Universe truly is…………………………………..