Fabulous Serendipity. Or Not.

I love serendipity. It’s just the coolest thing. If you’re a superstitious sort of a person, you might think serendipity is a Sign from the Universe. Maybe a Message from God.

What serendipity is, actually, is not what we think it is. It’s not what *I* thought it was, actually. And this, below, is not about serendipity, no matter that I would have called it that before I read about what serendipity really means and about the serendipity of scientific discovery.

Although you could argue, from this, that what’s below IS an example of serendipity.

My god, language is tough. No wonder people have such a hard time with it and resort to slang, “you know,” and pop phrases culled from TV. You know: “Not so much.” “And how’s that working for you?”

When I discovered that serendipity is listed as one of the ten words that are the most difficult to translate,

Plenipotentiary †

Gobbledegook †

Serendipity †

Poppycock †

Googly †

Spam †

Whimsy †

Bumf †

Chuffed †

Kitsch

I started to just say “Screw it” and change the title to “A Simple Coincidence.”

But how boring is that? Really.

So never mind, OK? I’ve worn myself out already, and I’m not even NEAR the point. So let’s just jump over there to it, shall we?

A couple weeks ago I interviewed artist Jane Cather. You may have seen her fabulous custom-designed studio in the Feb/Mar/April issue of Where Women Create. So you can imagine how much fun this was for me.

So we did the interview, and I printed out my notes and saved the audio and then remembered to go eat breakfast, and then I went out to get the mail.

And got this from Pumpkin Girl, in Chicago:

And I stood there on the sidewalk looking at it, my mouth hanging open, and said, “Wow!”

Because although I hardly ever see rubber stamp images any more, I recognized those immediately from the days when Rubber Stamps Were My Life. And I loved these particular images. And they were designed (you know where this is going, right?) for Rubbermoon Rubber Stamps by: Jane Cather.

I get a rubber stamped postcard. It has Jane Cather’s images on it, images I actually REMEMBER (whoa!), as Jane had reminded me that we used to be in touch Back in the Day. And I it was deposited in my mailbox while I was talking to Jane on the phone.

(I actually thought, for a second, that it was from Jane herself, with an alias, but she is across the country from Chicago.)

Serendipity? Coincidence? A Sign from the Universe? What do you think?

I just call it way, way cool.

XO