Grandmotherly Vada Carlson and I were sitting on a porch up on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
She edited a children's magazine for a nonprofit organization. She said
she spent so much time in their library that visitors often mistook her
for a librarian.
Random Selection
When they asked for help, she would rise from her
chair, intuitively pick a row to walk down, reach up and grab a book,
open it, and point to a paragraph. "They take a look, thank me, and
continue reading. It always seems to work," said Vada.
That reminded me of something I'd wondered about since grade
school. "Maybe you can tell me," I said. "Why is it that whenever I see
a word that's new to me, I always see it twice more within a few days?"
She said that probably, after I had first taken note of a new word, I was simply more primed to notice it a second and third time.
Disappointed, I fell silent.
The Cavalry Arrives
But Vada got the conversation going again. "Oh,
did I tell you? My son just bought a camel barn! He thinks the long
building will be perfect for his wallpaper business."
I forgot my disappointment. I wanted to know about the camel barn.
Sometime way back, she wasn't sure when, the army had decided
to use camels out West. When they gave up on the idea, two barns were
built in California to house all the decommissioned camels.
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That was something I'd never heard before.
Flying Home
The next morning when I got on the plane to fly
back to Boston, the stewardess handed me a magazine. I opened it at random and looked at
the article's title, "The Ill-Fated Camel Brigade of the Southwest Desert."
I wanted to tell Vada - in person! - that synchronicity really
exists! But it was several years later when I finally got the chance.
She had moved to Winslow AZ. I drove into town about 10PM and
surprised her with a phone call. She invited me over and gave
directions to her house.
When I arrived, she said she had been remarried to an artist named Jose
Rodriquez, who had recently died. She took me through their home
showing me his work.
Accomplished Artist
I enjoyed seeing her house and her husband's beautiful paintings,
but I had waited such a long time.
I wanted to tell Vada about the camel article I'd been given that following day on the airplane.
I wanted to see how she would react.
Since I'd said it looked like synchronicity occurs in three's,
I wondered if she would ask me if there had been a third encounter. There hadn't been, unfortunately.
We reached the couch and were about to sit down to talk.
Above the couch hung one last painting - a family in
the desert on their buckboard wagon who had stopped to talk with two cavalrymen mounted on camels.
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