Framily Archives - Sisterhood Of The Sensible Moms | Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

Having never been a stone’s throw or even a short car ride away from family my entire marriage, I appreciate the things my friends who are like family, my framily (I used this term way before Sprint), bring to my life. I like to repay them for their myriad acts of kindness and for just bearing with the sheer volume of us. I tend to do this by showing up at school plays and soccer games far from where my actual kids either work or play.

On Friday night, I headed with a vanful of my people to a nearby town to watch a play where some framily members were singing and dancing in the chorus and rocking the tech crew. As we were leaving, I saw a waning crescent moon with Venus and Mars perfectly framed in the front windshield. It was a Whoa, there! moment for sure. “Tech down, folks,” I cried from the front seat, “this is a sign of portent. Good things are a-coming.”

Love this great amateur photo and the others like it that I found here

When we arrived at the huge urban high school, it looked like perhaps I had misread the sign. The parking lot in front of the the theater was completely packed—-buses, cars, vans, double-parked cars, triple-parked cars, cars on top of cars kind of packed. It was a madhouse without all the fun sideshows. Clearly there was also no room for the likes of us near the nice, warm, inviting entrance. Now normally this would be no big deal, but school systems all over the region had actually cancelled school on this Friday due to dangerously low temperatures. Nobody wanted to hoof it even half a block in the sub zeros.

After dropping off the kids at the nice, warm entrance like good moms, my friend Gina and I steadied ourself for Survivor: Mini-Van Edition. Just as we despaired of finding anything within a non-frostbite-inducing walk, a lucky glance sideways found another entrance around the back. In the next five minutes, we found not just a place to park, but Gina’s dad (who had until this point been incommunicado—a major point of stress in our already harried hunt), an open back door, and front row seats. Sign of portent indeed.

The play was so much better than I could have hoped for in a high school production that I wasn’t even counting the minutes until intermission, but when it came, my middle son popped out of his seat and said, “Mom, I found this. What should I do with it?” I took the men’s wallet in his hand and opened it. As I looked inside the still full wallet, my eyes widened a little when I read the ID, “Well, buddy, I know exactly what we are going to do.”

As it turned out, the wallet belonged to the son of a friend of mine who I had met back in the days of babysitting co-op and now kept in touch with through my book club. Lucy and I had just seen each other on Wednesday, and I quickly contacted her and told her the story.

She was completely floored that we found it. Her grown son had lost the wallet over a month ago when he attended his sister’s play at the school. They had looked everywhere extensively including the seat in the front row that my son happened to have been sitting in. We were both pretty amazed at the serendipity of my son who is not a student at the school finding the wallet of her son who is not a student there either.

Sometimes it's more than just a coincidence. Reading the Signs---Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

Lucy’s Facebook Update as proof

When I told Steve the story, he said, “Wow, you’re Forrest Gump.”

Our amazing coincidence not withstanding, maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. People have stories like this one all the time. Stories where lives intersect in beautiful, seemingly improbable ways are the ones we gravitate towards. They hint at a thread connecting us all and that little joy, that hint of magic, adds a little color in our lives and definitely injects a little warmth into a frigid cold February night.

The fact that my magical little moment probably isn’t such a special, singular event in the scheme of things doesn’t diminish it at all for me though. I’m taking it as a good sign that my life is just the right size for helping me find my way back to people I care about even in unexpected places.

Life may not be a box of chocolates, but it certainly is sweet.