`You’re not going to believe this because I couldn’t, but then there are so many facts coming to light nowadays that are, at best, counterintuitive—my two favorites? That light is both a wave and a particle (whaaat?) and entanglement–the concept that two subatomic particles, once in contact, remain inexplicably connected across spacetime so that what you do to one affects the other instantaneously. How do they know?
I am a student of discoveries, often controversial—about consciousness and connection, illusions and limitations. Maybe by the end of this story, you will agree with astronomer Fred Hoyle, who observed that the world moves through three stages in the acceptance of any new idea.
First? It’s nonsense.
Second? It’s not actually new.
Third? We knew it all along. (Smiling here.)
My story begins after my parents’ divorce, when my mother sold Barnstead, the white house with the green shutters on the blue-gray river, and we moved to an established neighborhood. I was 12, and the prevailing theory was that this would be good for me. I had been isolated at the Barn, and now there would be swimming from a community beach, ice skating on the creek, and friends with boats for waterskiing. Mom bought a lot on a hill, built another house, and we moved in.
I was grieving but didn’t know it. I was lonely but didn’t show it–so when a construction company began prepping the lot across the cul-de-sac to build a new house, I developed a ritual.
After the carpenters had left for the day, I slipped down the hill to the construction site and sat on the cinderblocks, then the plywood, then on stacks of wallboard, and eventually on the front steps, and wished on the first bit of starlight that pierced the indigo of early evening. “Let a best friend move into this house,” I would ask.” Please let a best friend move in,” I would pray. The green, three-bedroom rancher neared completion but remained empty. I kept praying.
One day, I was home alone, attempting to fry chicken in my bathing suit—not a stellar idea– and there was a knock on the door. A man with blond hair and a friendly smile stood on our porch. “Hi,” he said, “My family is moving in across the cul-de-sac. Do you, by any chance, have a hose I could borrow?”
I was excited that we did indeed have a hose, and I knew where it was. As I handed it over, I asked, “Do you have any kids?”
He smiled down at me, “Yes, I do. I have a boy who is 9 ….” I held my breath, please, please, please, “and a girl about your age.”
A girl! My age!
When he returned the hose, he brought his daughter with him, and we were indeed in the same grade. My new neighbor had very round blue eyes like her father’s and thick, straight blond hair I admired cut in a Dutchboy bob.
She became my best friend for many years. We made scrapbooks, put lemon juice in our hair, picked violets in April, and skipped school, but responsibly: usually on a Thursday so we could pick up any work we missed on Friday.
Eventually, we went away to different colleges, but on our first summer back home, she introduced me to the man I would marry, who would become the father of my three children. In fact, we married men who were college classmates and best friends as well.
We would never again live in the same state, but we stayed in touch, oddly connected—entangled, you might say. The military officers we had married both left the Navy, and we both had two daughters and a son. Often, when I received a photo, I’d note that we had bought the same dress from 1500 miles apart or had the same placemats—and then there was this.
I published a book about ten years ago with Penguin Random House. The publisher reprinted it 8 times, keeping it on the shelf of every Barnes and Noble in the country for nearly a decade and in 20 countries around the world. I’ve found the book in the University of Otago bookstore in Auckland, New Zealand, and in England. When it went out of print, I bought the few remaining new copies from the publisher and the rest continue to sell on Amazon.
But one day, walking past one of those “Little Libraries” that have popped up in neighborhoods around the country, I thought, “I should stick a copy of my book in there. Maybe someone could use it, and I’ll get to know my neighbors better.”
I didn’t want to use the few remaining new copies I owned, so I ordered two copies online from the first used book dealers that popped up. The first arrived in good condition, so I stuck it in the little library down the street. The second book arrived two days later. I was sitting on the hearth in front of a crackling fire when I opened the package and leafed through the book to assess its condition.
Inside the front cover, the book’s original owner had placed a sticker with her name and address. I shook my head, smiling in the warmth and glow of the fire. Of the thousands of books out there, how in the world had I ended up with the only copy owned by the girl who had changed my life more than once.
Entangled.
We have seen each other once in the last 20 years. We have been in intermittent email contact. We have never lived closer than half a country apart. Until recently, we have never even lived in the same time zone.
Then I started laughing. It appeared my best friend had dumped my book. And I didn’t mind at all, whatever the circumstances. Everything has a lifespan, right? Interests run their courses. Relationships as well?
Maybe not. Maybe some relationships started before you were born and will last long after you die. Maybe some are conjured on the first star of early evening, and some are agreements to meet again in another place and time as different people whose souls recognize each other. Maybe we are all chapters in the same book awaiting a new edition.
You look into the eyes of the person you love. “That’s nonsense,” you say.
“And I have known it all along.”
Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.
Nancy Prendergast says
Laura, you do have the more serendipitous things happen to you! What a lovely reflection on friendship, thank you.
Laura J Oliver says
Thanks for writing, Nancy! I bet your life is full of serendipitous occurrences as well. Be on the lookout! And when the next one happens, I hope you write about it.