The Piano Connection

Did you ever hear the expression "If it was a snake, it would have bitten you?????" Well, this story will explain it!!

One of my daughter's friends was proficient in piano and decided to teach a few students the summer before he started college. He had one student in particular who he felt was really gifted and knowing I was a piano teacher, asked if I would take him on when he left for school. I agreed and started teaching Jack in October of 2003. He was indeed gifted and a delightful pre-teen at the time.

 

I met Jack's mom at the first lesson and a few weeks later learned that she worked in the same nursery school as one of my best friends. She would drop him off for lessons and wait in the car as most parents did. There wasn't really time for conversations as the students came to me one after another.

 

Meanwhile, I worked at the Ymca, opening the membership desk at 5am on Monday and Friday mornings. I had my regulars and knew everyone on a first name basis. There were 2 guy friends who came in together regularly and I would tease them and call them the "Evil Twins."

 

About 6 months or so went by and one of the evil twins told me I would not see him for 10 days because he and his family were going to Hawaii. That same week, Jack came to his lesson and told me he would not be at next week's lesson because he was going to Hawaii with his family.

 

You can imagine the look on my face when I came to the realization that I had been teaching the evil twin's son all of these months!!!

I had not paid particular attention to their last name and I did not notice the resemblance he had to his dad. What a cool surprise it was to learn I had been teaching his son all of those months!!

Babysitting is our Business

"Children are our most valuable natural resource"

When I was living in Delaware County, I started babysitting at the age of 13. I once remember sitting for a family who had 5 girls. It was fun at first but I welcomed the chance (for peace and quiet!!) to sit for my neighbor's son. For the sake of the significance of my story, I will approximate that I sat for him in 1967.

In 1983, my husband and I moved to Chester County (about 40 minutes from Delaware County). We started a family of our own and when my daughter was 13 we moved to a huge development with lots of younger kids for her to babysit. She babysat for a few families in the development but her favorite family had 2 girls ages 4 and 6. She started sitting for them in 1999 until they were old enough that they didn't need a sitter. She loved them and they loved her. She read to them, braided their hair, painted their nails and we became good friends with the family.

 

When she first started sitting for them we discovered that they had also moved from Delaware County. Here is the best part.....the father of the girls was the stepson and stepbrother of the boy I babysat for in my neighborhood in Delaware County.

 

The story gets even better....a year and a half later, my son attended a private high school in Malvern and guess who his theology teacher was?????? The little boy who I babysat for in my neighborhood and uncle of the girls my daughter sat for!!!!!

We are still friends with this family and treasure our memories together!!

Puppy Love - First Childhood Crush

"Like an old photograph, time can make a feeling fade.

But the memory of a first love, never fades away."

When I was 5 years old, I met a kid in the neighborhood named David. We would play outside with other kids from the houses around us...there were girls and boys of all ages and we would play ball, run, hide and seek, play "red light, green light" and just have fun outdoors. I had such a crush on David from the time I was 5 until I was 12. I just loved him...he was my first love. When he was 13, he moved away and we had no idea where he went.

I kept in touch with one girl from the neighborhood. She was my best girlfriend, named Patrice. Over the years, off and on, I would ask her, "I wonder what happened to David?" I told her that it would be so cool to see him and we wondered what he was up to. So, years and years passed and he was tucked away in the back of my mind.

A few months ago, a friend from Arizona invited me to join Facebook. It is a way to connect with friends, find old friends, post pictures, etc. I joined but never bothered with it much and in 2 weeks or so went back on and noticed a box at the top that said "reconnect with old friends." I found myself typing in David's name and I found a match in Houston. I emailed him and asked if he grew up in my hometown. He responded back with the name of his street and I knew instantly it was him.

I excitedly wrote back to see if he remembered me. He did and told me he was going to be in Philly for a job interview and did I want to get together. I was thrilled and tried to contain myself as I dialed my mother to tell her the news. Right away the Italian mother in her asked me if he was married, what did he look like.....I stopped her right there and told her that I did not care if he was married or what he looked like. I was not meeting him for that purpose. I did not care about his looks or marital status. All I cared about was coming face to face with the man, who as a child, was my first crush, my first love.

I cannot tell you how I felt when I saw him. We hugged, I was teary eyed and we talked about the neighborhood and playing ball in the street. I told him that he could not ever imagine what it meant to me to see him after 43 years, that he was my first love, my first childhood crush. I think he turned all shades of red as he did not have a clue. After all, we were kids and girls had cooties.

The amazing thing about this was the timing. He was living in Texas and just happened to be in Philly around the time he recieved my email. Another weird twist is that the day we met just happened to be my best friend Patrice's birthday.

It has been a year now since we met and we have become good friends. It was a dream of mine that I never in a million years thought would come true and here we are 43 years later, a 12 year old's dream come true. Something like this only happens once in a lifetime. I feel so blessed that we have become good friends and I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever see him again. This was truly the work of a higher power!!!!!

A Good Deed, A Good Dame

In the beginning of 2006, when I was working for the Downingtown Chamber of Commerce, a woman called and asked if I could give her the telephone number of a mover in my area. I asked her why because there were so many movers and I needed more details.

She told me that she was bidding on dishes on Ebay and it was "pick up only" and she lived in Texas but she really wanted the dishes. She contacted the Ebay seller but they were not willing to ship them out. Apparently, they were discontinued and she had to have them!

I told her that I lived in the area and that I would pick them up and ship them out to her. When I went to pick up the dishes, it turned out that the seller lived in my old neighborhood. I took them to a UPS packing store and had them shipped out to Virginia in Texas.

She could not believe that I, a total stranger, would do this for her. I told her it was not a big deal and I was only picking them up and shipping them off (of course I had her CC info so it was not out of my pocket).

She sent me flowers when her dishes arrived as a "thank you" for being so kind. She had her dishes to complete her set, I did a good deed and that was the end of that......so I thought!

The end of 2007, I went to Fort Worth, Texas and had the contact information for Virginia. I called her and she was a 2 hour drive from where I was. I hopped in the car and drove to her house for a visit, had lunch with her and her hubby and drove back to Fort Worth where I was staying. It was totally random that I would end up being that close to her and really a bizarre twist of fate or was it just a coincidence????? Not that this is that unusual, but I was born in Virginia and her name was Virginia. Was this supposed to happen or was it just a chance meeting from a good deed??????

Same Age 32 Years Later

In 1973, a very good friend of mine from high school and I were 20 years old.

In 2005, his daughter & my daughter met when they were 20 years old.

We wanted to introduce our daughters because they were both attending the same college & one of them was looking for a room mate. They met, half-heartedly because at that age, who wants to meet the daughter of their parent's high school friends. Well, one thing led to another & they discovered that they had many things in common; their birthdays were only 6 days apart, they were both Italian, loved Frank Sinatra & they could pass for sisters (we referred to them as "the twins"). They became great friends & eventually room mates.

What a strange and wonderful coincidence that 32 years later, our daughters met and became very good friends!

My Darling Dutch Daughter

I'm back after the long holiday weekend with part 3 of my story regarding the Dutchman.

After corresponding with him via email for almost 3 years, he told me that his oldest daughter has been saving her money for 1 year in order to come to America. He proposed that she would come and live with me for 2 months, find a job and perfect her English.

I met her briefly while visiting the Netherlands but was nervous about having the responsibility of a 23 year old. I got busy painting her room and found a pretty lamp and bedspread to match the curtains that were in my own daughter's old bedroom. I cut some fresh flowers from my garden and was very excited about her visit. I went shopping for goodies and made a list of all of the places I would take her.

I went to pick her up from the airport on September 1st. Tomorrow will be 1 week that she has been here. The week has flown by and we have been busy every day and every night. Tonight she is with my own darling daughter having more fun with her own age group than her American mother!

My Dutch daughter is speaking very good English. She is bright and sweet and helpful and charming and wonderful and I am so glad that I can contribute to this once in a lifetime experience for her. If I had not met her father and mother by the "fateful encounter," this would not have been possible. Everything happens for a reason - Elk ding gebeurt om een reden.

I am trying very hard to learn Dutch but she may have to stay longer than 2 months for that to happen!!!

Wizard of Oss

This is the 2nd part of my fabulous story about meeting the Dutchman, the fabulous "Wizard of Oss."

We arrived at a beautiful hotel in Oss and were wiped out since the time change was 6 hours difference. The next morning we decided to take a quick walk around the town. It was enjoyable but as all tourists venturing out alone in a foreign land, we found ourselves lost and unable to find our hotel. Thank God my male friend was agreeable to asking directions!

We wondered into a random store in our travels. It was a produce store and the owner came over to greet us. We told him we were from America on business and needed to get back to our hotel. My boyfriend told him the name of the company he was with in Oss and he immediately grinned and said, "I know who you are."

Well, it turned out that my Dutchman was the store owner's best friend and he was telling him about our visit. To make it even more interesting, the store owner wanted to play a trick on his best friend and gave us shirts with his store logo and asked if we would wear them later that night when we went over to the Dutchman's house.

When we walked into the house, his eyes almost popped out of his head. He wanted to know where we got the shirts. I told him I bought them on Ebay (since this is how we met in the first place) and he did not believe me. I tried to fool him for as long as I could but finally burst into laughter and told him the truth.

Out of all of the shops we passed, why did we stop at this one?????
The answer is simple......fate lead us to his door!!!!