This blurb will introduce a few stories coming up here.  I have been avoiding my BOHU (Beyond Our Human Understanding) stories because I fear that some of you will just think I am totally insane.  However, I am tired of holding them in and will just tell them now, one after another, until they are done.  Others will pop up later I’m sure, but these are the ones I have told orally over and over, as if I can’t believe they are true.  But they are.  Call them coincidences – but what is a coincidence other than a co+incident.  Things happening simultaneously in time.  What strikes me is the the spiritual nature of these experiences.  It’s not a coincidence like meeting someone at a store at the same time to buy lettuce or something.  So think what you like.  Glean meaning or no meaning as you wish.  I personally don’t know what to think about any of it, really.  Here we go…

Let me set the stage: 

1) My Dad had passed away a few years earlier. 

2) This was during my “how did I get here?” stage of marriage and raising children. I had recently had a conversation with Al about how romance had died (three little kids – sound familiar to anyone out there?)  I told him I thought he’d rather spray Round-Up Weed Killer on the hillside than take me out to dinner.

 3) I was building my dollhouse up at Cooper’s Dollhouse Studio in Benicia.  There was a workshop there, I rented a table and would get away from it all and play with my hobby.  There were others there as well and we’d have a great time building and swearing at our mistakes and laughing. 

4)  At the time, I had been listening frequently to one of Mom and Dad’s favorite “albums” in my car – Frank Sinatra’s I Remember Tommy tape.  The songs are romantic, uplifting even when they are songs of unrequited love, because of the mostly swing tempos.  That and Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable tape were my constant companions as I drove around. 

One night I had a dream that was so real I woke up a little shook.  My Dad was one of the first people on earth to buy a pair of sterophonic headphones and he would often sit in the living room chair and listen to music from reel-to-reel tapes with his big bulky headphones on.  In my dream, my Dad was in MY living room here in Lafayette, California, headphones on, contented smile on his face.  I came in, shocked to see him, and asked him “Dad! What are YOU doing here?”  He just took off the headphones, handed them to me, and said “Listen.”  That was the end of the dream.  I woke up feeling like he had been right in the room with me.

Later that day Al called and told me he was taking me out to dinner at a local nice French restaurant.  (Please note:  He did, but not before he parked the car in front of our local historical tavern for a cocktail.  The name of the place?  The Roundup. Hardy har har har…) As a stay at home Mom who had been spending her discretionary money on dollhouse materials, I really didn’t have a thing to wear.  So I ventured into town and parked the car in front of a small clothing shop, turned off the car and went in.  I bought a nice little skirt and blouse, telling the story of my responsive husband, the ladies in the store, like Cinderella’s fairy godmothers, excitedly helping me choose what to wear that night.

After that I planned to head up to Benicia.  When I turned on the car, Frank Sinatra blasted out at me (I never remember to turn the radio down before I get out of the car) this final line from “There Are Such Things:”

“YOU’LL REACH A STAR, BECAUSE THERE ARE SUCH THINGS…”

I laughed to myself and said “ok, Dad, I heard it.  Thanks…”

Off I went up to Benicia.  There was a woman there and as we worked I told her my cute little story.  She was older than I am and we exchanged a few guardian angel stories, and she explained that her husband wasn’t romantic, never was, and that she had just accepted it after all these years. 

What I am about to tell you is true.  I can’t remember their names so I don’t have to change them.  Within half an hour her husband walked into the workshop and handed her a small box,inside was a lovely little bracelet.  She looked at him, confused and said “What did I do?”  then laughing “What did YOU do?”   He just shrugged his shoulders and said, I don’t know, I was just walking by the jewelry store and I saw that and thought of you and that you might like it.  She stammered her thanks and gave him a smooch and off he went on his merry way, the whole time my eyes are popping out of my head.

When he left neither she nor I could say much – we were speechless but we both knew what the other was thinking – it was almost too much to speak of.  What could we even say?  How could either of us ever describe what had just occurred?  What would YOU say?  What I say now is that Dad came down for a little visit, and in his thorough way did not just assume that I would get the message via Frankie boy, but also commandeered an unsuspecting heretofore unromantic husband to drive home the point.  You’ll never convince me otherwise, oh skeptics, that you’ll reach a star, because there are such things.