In the Alphabet of Daily Life; and by that I mean the routines one tends to follow in order to make things go smooth and the way you want; I find that the C of Coincidence can at times play incredibly surprising parts. Mostly I try to adopt the attitude and live by the conviction that ‘if things are meant to be’, they will work out smoothly. If on the other end, something hampers the flow, then I have to listen to the message and learn to accept that its apparently not the right time or place.
There are those moments however when theory collides with daily life. Something has to get done and leaves no room to wiggle philosophical attitudes . One of those moments for me was last week. when I was running around like mad, trying to put a dinner party together to see off my oldest son who will soon be going abroad for half a year.
My son is a lover of seafood. The thing with seafood however, is that it has to be fresh and you can really only buy it on the day you eat it. Ofcourse I could have bought all the trimmings and wine earlier; but since I had to go out shopping to buy the lobster and the oysters anyway; I had it all economically time-wise planned on D- day. But… as Murphy’s law has it on shopping spurs like this, Fate was against me. Parking places were hard to find; wines that I wanted were out of stock; hiccups so to speak, that didn’t really agree with me.
Finally around 4 in the afternoon; I only had one more round of grocery shopping left to do. Since the sun was out and my experience with parking spots that day had been disappointing; I tossed my purse in my hand bag, and biked to the local supermarket, to buy the last of what looked like I was shopping for Christmas.
With a cart filled with way too many ‘just in case’ items; I stood waiting at the cash register; ready to pay when………
Did you ever have that? It’s end of the day, there’s a rather long line with people waiting behind you and you can’t find your debit card?
….I broke into sweat. I had no cash on me. In my minds eye I saw the disaster of me putting all the grocery shopping back in its proper place; bike back home; look for my debit card of which I didn’t have a clou what happened to it and come back to do the whole round of shopping all over again. One of them moments with a capital yet disastrous M in the Alphabet of Daily Life.
On impuls I decided someone should come and rescue me. While loading my grocery shopping back into the cart; so the next person in line could continue; my phone pressed to my ear I reached out to my youngest daughter.
She picked up rather quickly. In a timid voice I started explaining I was at the supermarket with a cart filled to the rim but no debit card.
“Which supermarket are you” she asked.
I told her.
“We’re there too” she said.
Stunned, I turned around to look into the shop; and found the two sets of bright blue eyes of both my daughters laughing at me. ‘As it happened’ they had made the last minute decision to get just one little item at exactly that supermarket rather than the other’.
The lady at the cash register as well as the people who had been waiting in line when my little drama unfolded itself; were short of applauding when one of my daughters detached herself from the crowd at the other cash register and came to my rescue.
That’s what Coincidence with a capitol C can do for your day.
Ingrid Schippers
April 24 2018
The spoken version of this blog, features as end note on ‘Dutchbuzz’, the radio hour for Internationals every Tuesday from 10 to 11 pm on ‘Den Haag FM and can be found in the Programme Archive of the Dutchbuzz podcasts, dated April 24th , 2018.
