A Sense Of Home
I was on a mission to find the identical twin, to a set of curtains I had just purchased from HomeSense. I don’t really like shopping. I hunt. I gather. I grab, and I go. So, it took me less than a minute to spot, reach in past the customer looking at the same set, lift its hanger, and pop it in my cart. Turning toward the cash, I offhandedly suggested, “You should definitely buy those, I already have a set and I love them”.
What proceeded was otherworldly.
My fellow shopper explained she had been looking for the curtains that I had just grabbed because they matched in length and style, the stately bay window of her father’s Victorian home. Her mother had passed away three years previously, and her father had insisted that new ones not be purchased. Tattered and worn, he loved them, because her hands had sewn them. Today, was the day her father had given her permission to buy new curtains and their purchase would mark a sense of moving on, of moving forward…
Her mother had passed away three years previously, and her father had insisted that new ones not be purchased. Tattered and worn, he loved them, because her hands had sewn them.
I teared up and promptly took the curtains from my cart and handed them to her. Who was I to come between a grieving family courageously taking their first symbolic step toward a new normal? Through masks and expressive eyes, we played a game of, “No, You Take Them” – a version of Hot Potato but with a set of curtains in short supply.
When she asked, “Ok. Who are you? With all this kindness, on a random Wednesday at 2:18 in Waterloo?” I shared my name, and where I live. “Mannheim!” she screamed in delight, “Of course you are, I’m from New Hamburg!” She had spontaneously ducked away from homeschooling her two sons, in search of a moment of sanity. Those two sons she explained, had been so inspired by Ernie Ritz’s writing, that they too became authors of a children’s book, planning to share it with the world just as Covid hit.
We, now together, were gifted an opportunity to count all the ways our lives had been cross-stitched together with significantly less than six degrees of separation. We both recognized the infinitesimal milliseconds required to create this moment, where we wanted something more for a stranger than we wanted for ourselves. It wasn’t about the curtains. We were delighted and surprised by a deep sense of connection.
I’m a great admirer of Fate. I’ve watched her from a distance mysteriously arranging phone calls, meetings, opportunities and ultimately, life-changing events between unlikely people in perfect timing. I’ve stood in awe of the manner in which she has weaved the most glorious synchronistic events, shifting the trajectory of well-laid plans and sending us on journeys we couldn’t have imagined in our wildest dreams. I’m so grateful to have been sprinkled with a little of Fate’s fairy dust in the curtain section of HomeSense, where two women from Wilmot shared a sense of home.
A Sense Of Home
I was on a mission to find the identical twin, to a set of curtains I had just purchased from HomeSense. I don’t really like shopping. I hunt. I gather. I grab, and I go. So, it took me less than a minute to spot, reach in past the customer looking at the same set, lift its hanger, and pop it in my cart. Turning toward the cash, I offhandedly suggested, “You should definitely buy those, I already have a set and I love them”.
What proceeded was otherworldly.
My fellow shopper explained she had been looking for the curtains that I had just grabbed because they matched in length and style, the stately bay window of her father’s Victorian home. Her mother had passed away three years previously, and her father had insisted that new ones not be purchased. Tattered and worn, he loved them, because her hands had sewn them. Today, was the day her father had given her permission to buy new curtains and their purchase would mark a sense of moving on, of moving forward…
Her mother had passed away three years previously, and her father had insisted that new ones not be purchased. Tattered and worn, he loved them, because her hands had sewn them.
I teared up and promptly took the curtains from my cart and handed them to her. Who was I to come between a grieving family courageously taking their first symbolic step toward a new normal? Through masks and expressive eyes, we played a game of, “No, You Take Them” – a version of Hot Potato but with a set of curtains in short supply.
When she asked, “Ok. Who are you? With all this kindness, on a random Wednesday at 2:18 in Waterloo?” I shared my name, and where I live. “Mannheim!” she screamed in delight, “Of course you are, I’m from New Hamburg!” She had spontaneously ducked away from homeschooling her two sons, in search of a moment of sanity. Those two sons she explained, had been so inspired by Ernie Ritz’s writing, that they too became authors of a children’s book, planning to share it with the world just as Covid hit.
We, now together, were gifted an opportunity to count all the ways our lives had been cross-stitched together with significantly less than six degrees of separation. We both recognized the infinitesimal milliseconds required to create this moment, where we wanted something more for a stranger than we wanted for ourselves. It wasn’t about the curtains. We were delighted and surprised by a deep sense of connection.
I’m a great admirer of Fate. I’ve watched her from a distance mysteriously arranging phone calls, meetings, opportunities and ultimately, life-changing events between unlikely people in perfect timing. I’ve stood in awe of the manner in which she has weaved the most glorious synchronistic events, shifting the trajectory of well-laid plans and sending us on journeys we couldn’t have imagined in our wildest dreams. I’m so grateful to have been sprinkled with a little of Fate’s fairy dust in the curtain section of HomeSense, where two women from Wilmot shared a sense of home.