win two signed copies of The House on Fortune Street

There seems always to be a push-pull in relationships, a coincidence of feeling that is not often a shared feeling, but a contrary movement in the world. I have a broken friendship, one that buckled after 25 years, and just today I realized I needed to change my will so that I don't leave everything to her. (She has no need of money.) And not an hour after I mentally made the cut with her, she texted me for the first time in almost a year--to ask if she could return the stone head of Bacchus I'd stored at her house during a move years before.She asked if she could just leave it on my front porch, and I texted back "Perfect." Perfect in so many ways. The perfect timing of sorrow shifting to antipathy for me; anger shifting to resignation for her. I I am still experiencing the coincidences of sympathetic friendship with her, where even in leavetaking we are in step.

Fate....After losing my job of eleven years I thought I'd hedge my bets and go without the cobra insurance afterall I was only 37 years old; what could possibly happen? So for six months I dutifully looked for a job, reported to unemployment each week, and fended off phone calls from my mother warning me that I was taking a gamble going without insurance; one catastophic illness could financially ruin me for life; will she ever stop. So, I took a job and finally quietted Mom with I finally have insurance; it's here fate comes in disguised in the coat of ovarian cancer but not financial ruin. How long had the cancer been growing was the one question I could find my way to asking the doctor; his reply...six months!

I live in Sacramento, California and was working downtown at my second job (I wanted some extra money for Christmas). I bought a burrito from Taco Bell and decided to sit on a bench on the pedestrian mall to eat my lunch. It was a beautiful fall afternoon and there were many other folks with the same idea sitting here and there along the mall, eating or talking or just watching everyone else do their thing. I sipped my water and ate my lunch; I didn't really notice at first that there was a growing group of police officers gathering across the mall. The cops were mostly Light Rail Transit cops, circling an obviously homeless guy who it turns out was sneaking a ride on the train without a ticket. Then a city cop pulls up in a cruiser, then two bicycle officers -- the people around me started to notice the commotion and conversations ended and we all started to stare at the growing spectacle. Another cruiser pulls up with two more city cops, then to top it all off an equestrian officer from the Capitol Park detail trots up on his very impressive mount to look down on it all. So, we've got maybe 10 cops dealing with a homeless guy too drunk to hop off the train before he gets caught riding without a ticket. "I'll bet there's a murder out in Oak Park right now with no one to respond to because all the cops are here writing a ticket to a drunk guy for riding the train without a ticket." I look up to see a dark-haired guy with a neatly trimmed moustache sipping a cup of coffee, kind of half-laughing and shaking his head at it all. A few other folks close by start talking about how ludicrous it all was; about 6 of us were discussing what seemed to be strange priorities on the part of law enforcement. Soon, I realized that the only people still having a conversation were the dark-haired guy and me. We talked for close to an hour, then I reluctantly stood up. "Well," I said, "I've got to be getting back to work." He stood up and extended his hand to shake mine, saying, "I enjoyed talking to you -- have a nice rest of your day, now. My name is Christopher, by the way." "Roberta," I replied. "Nice to meet you, too." I walked about 5 feet away and then stopped and turned around. I walked back over to where he had sat back down and took a scrap of paper out of my purse. "I've never done this before, but I really enjoyed our conversation. Give me a call sometime, I'd like to talk to you again." I scribbled my name and number down and handed it to him. He smiled -- "I will call, that really was a nice talk."

He called three times, leaving messages on my answering machine but never leaving his number until I changed the message on my answering machine to include "And if this is Christopher, leave your number!" The first night we talked for two hours, made a date for the next night and were married three weeks later. After 17 years, I wish I knew where that homeless guy was staying -- I'd buy him a beer.

When I first came to live in the United States in 1986 I had no job, and for a while I painted walls, tutored kids, and picked up whatever work I could here and there. Even though I had some fun, I wasn’t actually using my Oxford doctorate nor my counseling skills. I knew I was just trying to get by and that I wasn’t fully engaged in what I was doing. I was on the verge of taking a job with a rehabilitation center for teenagers, which required long hours, paid poorly, and which I knew from experience could be heart-breaking work. Then I saw an advertisement for a teaching job at a local college. Teaching was something I knew I was competent at doing. I wrote off and was called for an interview.
The day of the interview I brushed off my only suit, tidied myself up, and took my map. I had no car, but I knew where the college was, if not the details of how to get there. Still, I reckoned it couldn’t be too difficult to find if hundreds of students managed it each day. So I took the subway to the end of the line and figured that I’d find a cab or a bus and that would be simple. Coming from England, where there were cabs and buses almost everywhere, I had no fears. Still, I left a good chunk of time because I hate to be late. I got off the subway and found myself in what was then a very seedy area of town. Lots of people were about, all were black, and quite a few didn’t understand English. Or perhaps it was just my English they couldn’t understand.
There were no cabs in sight, and the bus went exactly twice a day, I was told, if I cared to wait until 6 p.m. So I found a phone and called a cab company. No one wanted to come and pick me up. I couldn’t believe it. I tried again. No pickups in that area. I looked around. The place didn’t look dangerous. In fact, it looked pretty neat to me, with plenty of cool ethnic shops displaying colorful items I wished I had time to look at; but the cab companies, all of them, seemed to disagree.
So I asked the way from a friendly passerby and decided I’d walk. Time was ticking away fast now. Just to be on the safe side, I decided to start walking and hold out my hitch-hiking thumb as well. Even in an urban area it might just be possible to find a lift, I thought, since I’d hitch-hiked all over Europe as a kid.
The day was fine, I was walking along, best suit, briefcase, umbrella, and one hand held out, thumb extended, when a car screeched to a halt beside me. It was rather dramatic. Inside was a decidedly beautiful young woman, a whole carful of groceries in brown bags, and a baby. “Get in” she said. By now, other cars were honking at her for blocking the road. So I got in and held the baby on my lap.
“You looked a bit desperate,” she said. I explained that I was trying to get to a job interview at the college, whereupon she looked over and said, “Well, you’re going in completely the wrong direction.” Then, just as I was about to volunteer to get out she said, “What the heck. I’ll take you there,” and pulled a U-turn so tight that I was temporarily smothered in grocery bags.
“When do you have to be there?” she yelled over the rising volume of a none-too-perfect exhaust system, and when I said in about 10 minutes she muttered something and stamped on the gas. Her large, far-from-new car didn’t exactly fly, but I do recall a light that had just turned red and was just as promptly ignored. I made cooing sounds to the baby and thanked the auburn-haired damsel for her kindness. I felt that if I had to be rescued, then a beautiful woman in an aging sedan was a wonderful variation on the theme.
We arrived at the college gates. I handed back the baby and was thanking her until she cut me short—“You’ll be late,” she said, “you’d better get a move on.”
I trotted up to the security shed at the main gate and asked about the place I was supposed to go for an interview. The guard was not helpful. Who was I? Why did I have to be there? And no, he didn’t have a map of the campus.
As we were talking, a huge green Lincoln Continental pulled up. I know it was a Lincoln because at that point it was one of the few American cars I could actually recognize, and chiefly because of its size. The person at the wheel turned out to be the director of one of the college departments, and he kindly drove me half a mile, right to the door of the building I needed. Since it had no sign on it I would never have been able to identify it on my own, especially as the campus was in vacation mode at that time and there was no one around to ask.
I ran up the stairs three at a time to the place my interview was to be. I looked at my watch. I was exactly one minute and 30 seconds late. That could be enough to create a bad impression. Fortunately, the previous candidate was still in the room, so I had a second or two to catch breath.
Do you see how unlikely this tale must sound?
By the time I was called in for the interview I felt that I’d already had a very odd kind of day, and I wasn’t nervous at all. I was simply myself. Then one of the interviewers asked me a question that was supposed to test some aspect of my teaching ability. He said, “What would you do if you came to class one day and half the students were not there, and the other half didn’t want to be there?” The way he phrased the question suggested he doubted I’d know what to do under such a circumstance. I could see it in his eyes; and perhaps he wanted to show me up as somehow deficient. My reply said itself before I even knew it. “Well,” I said, “you can’t do much about people who aren’t there . . . " The whole panel of interviewers erupted in laughter. We spent the next hour having an open, wide-ranging conversation. At one point the chair of the department jumped up and found a sheaf of cartoons about teaching. We snorted with laughter. Someone wiped away tears of laughter. it might have been me. i'm not sure.
I got the job.
Looking back over those events now it seems almost impossible that they should have turned out as they did. Had I taken the cab ride I’d probably have arrived tense, defensive, and determined to "do my best". Instead, I arrived a bit tousled and in a different mind-space, and that allowed me just to be myself.
I’ve now been in that job for 25 years. It hasn’t always been perfect, and I’ve made lots of mistakes over the years, but they were mostly to do with me, not the job itself. They were all times when I tried to force things along. And now, looking back over it all, I can say with some assurance that the job was exactly what I needed, given who I was at the time. Surely I’ve had my doubts and miseries at times—who doesn’t? But I have no doubt this was the right thing for me at that time.
It wasn’t what I wanted—in my vanity I wanted something more illustrious. But I have to say it was exactly what I needed for my personal growth.

One summer during college I stayed on campus and worked in a quarry from 6am to 4pm. Dusty, dirty work. I drove home one weekend to visit my family and generally refresh. On the way back I took my favorite back road, which took me winding through the countryside past creeks, abandoned farms, and tall corn fields. I slowed down somewhat to cross train tracks in the middle of nowhere. As soon as I passed I looked in my rear view mirror and saw that a train was now rushing by on those same tracks. The song playing on the radio in my ol' VW: Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door".

Last year I was selected to be a juror twice. I was actually looking forward to it, because I had been summoned repeatedly, but dismissed at the end of a day of sitting and waiting. Once all the jurors on the case were assembled, we discovered that another female juror shared my last name. The judge asked if we were related, (which we are not), and we looked at each other in surprise. Even more coincidental was that we both lived in the same suburb of San Diego only three blocks from each other! We ended up sharing a ride for two weeks to the trial.

I always wanted to go to BYU but went to SUUinstead. That is where I met my husband. There were many times before and while we were dating that I was thinking of going to UVU where my mother works, because I could go for free. Something always kept me in Cedar to attend SUU, eventually we ended up getting married and I think back that if I went to school somewhere else I would have never met him. We have been married 5 yes now and have 2 girls.

It is hard to tell when something is fate or coincidence. I originally enrolled and began attending Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL. I became very homesick and just did not feel like that was the place for me. So, home I go to Tallahassee, FL. I started attending Florida State University and became very good friends with a girl in my major. One day she invited me to go out with her and a few friends, asking me to PLEASE go with her as an ex-boyfriend of hers was going along and if she went along it would be pairings of couple and she and her ex. So, along I go and meet a funny, burly guy who I instantly take a liking to. We started dating and it just felt right! We moved in together about a month later and have never looked back. He and I have been together for nine years, married for six and have a beautiful five year old son. I cannot imagine my life turning out any differently. Now, whether my meeting my husband is fate or coincidence is up to the you to decide. I feel it was fate as I would never have met him if I didn't move home, start attending FSU and gone into Psychology as my major (I was going to Flagler as a Secondary Education major). If it is coincidence I have a strange twist for you: my husband ended up getting his Business degree from a satellite campus of....Flagler College!

Every summer, something different happens to my mother.
One summer, she almost had a heart attack. Last summer, her appendix burst.
Each summer, I find myself back in that same hospital waiting room with my family, waiting for any news. Each summer, I find myself standing next to my mother's bed, reading and crying, telling her I love her every few seconds.
My mother is always fine. We pull through, my family. I look forward to the summers, the things that will happen, ways I will grow. I know that, if something happens to my mother, that I will be alright, in the end.
Fate, coincidence, has been on my side so far.

On the way home to DC from NYC where I'd been visiting a friend for the weekend, I snagged an aisle seat in the train and spread my stuff all over the inside seat to discourage invaders. It worked until Trenton where a guy who looked, to me anyway, like Christopher Reeve playing Clark Kent, asked politely if I'd mind if he sat next to me. He said it was the last empty seat in the car. He sat. We had the kind of open, tell-all conversation for the next several hours that I only have with people I assume I'll never see again.

Looking back through 25 years of marriage to the guy, I wonder what would have happened if there had been another empty seat?

On the flight to Seattle where I was going to visit a friend, I began reading a novel by a Norwegian author (in English translation), Jostein Gaarder. It was the first time I'd read any Norwegian writer.

In Seattle, to my surprise, my friend introduced me to a good friend of his -- who was from Norway. I pulled out the novel from my bag and brandished it before my new (and now astonished) Norwegian friend. He told me about some of the places mentioned in the book, on the south coast of Norway. It provided a flying start (which was so much faster than the flight to Seattle) to this new friendship.

Growing up, I wanted to be a cop. My dad was a cop. Whether I should connect those last two sentences with "even though" or "because" or "and" I don't really know. He always told me he liked helping and protecting people and I told him I knew girls liked men in uniforms. One day, a girl who liked men in uniforms called our house and my dad became summer vacations, but I still wanted to be a cop.

Shortly thereafter, my sophomore American Lit teacher convinced me that I wanted to be a writer. I should write, study writers, study writing and enroll in college to access teachers of writing and other people who wanted to be writers, she said.

I wanted to go to college. Dad wanted me to be a cop, like him. He offered to help pay for college only if I majored in Criminal Justice so I could help victims (and maybe wear a uniform). Why not? He'll never know which classes I enroll in. So, I told him I wanted to be a cop. Tuition bills for the first two years of general study were paid and transcript records were cared less about.

During the same summer which I officially declared my major as "English" and subsequently enrolled in a majority of poetry and fiction workshops, some type of funding for college tuition became available through the township police department that my dad worked for. To get these monies, documents had to be furnished which proved a course of study related, even remotely, to law enforcement. Dad contacted the university for my enrollement history, and the rest is history. I told him I didn't want to be a cop, anymore.

Among the few pictures I keep of my dad is a black and white one of him walking the beat in downtown Canton with his parter. The picture is taken facing them. They are in full dress uniform, full stride, stone-faced, ready to help and protect. I glance at it every now and then and try to know my father better, but I can't. I don't know how I'll feel when he's dead. I hope I can tell him before that I wanted to be a writer.

I think that fate or destiny or coincidence has played a big part in my life, from my meeting my husband, to deciding on the name of our youngest two children. You see I had broken up with my husband to be and I was actually seeing another guy. He wanted me to be with him and to move off with him. But I said I didn't know why but I knew that my husband and I were meant to be together, and one day we would be together again. That same day my husband to be came back into town and the rest is history. We have been together from that day forth. I know too many of the advantages I've had in life were do to be in the right place at exactly the right time. If I had been there earlier or later I would have missed out.

I never will forget this year. My parents decided to separate during my last year of high school. This had really taken a toll on me. I slowly went from going to school everyday to maybe only 3 days out the week. When my dad left there was more pressure on my mom. She had to pay her bills and my dad's since he stopped paying, the lawyer fees, she was more than ready for a divorce by then, and also buying groceries for our house. Eventually her hours got cut until she was soon laid off. I graduated high school that same month. The next month i was able to hold a summer job for a month. I was so proud to help out around the house and to lessen the stress off of my mom. I am 18 and two months ago i got back with the boy who gave me my first kiss when we were 11. My mom,my brothers, and i are trying to start our own bussinesses. My mom has court for the divorce in a week or two. We are also planning to move very soon. Since my dad stop paying on the house, our current house is in foreclosure. Everyday i feel like my family is going to make it through. We went through so many unexpected things. We are waiting for so much better to come in our future. I have a gut feeling about this. Wish us luck ; )

I never will forget this year. My parents decided to separate during my last year of high school. This had really taken a toll on me. I slowly went from going to school everyday to maybe only 3 days out the week. When my dad left there was more pressure on my mom. She had to pay her bills and my dad's since he stopped paying, the lawyer fees, she was more than ready for a divorce by then, and also buying groceries for our house. Eventually her hours got cut until she was soon laid off. I graduated high school that same month. The next month i was able to hold a summer job for a month. I was so proud to help out around the house and to lessen the stress off of my mom. I am 18 and two months ago i got back with the boy who gave me my first kiss when we were 11. My mom,my brothers, and i are trying to start our own bussinesses. My mom has court for the divorce in a week or two. We are also planning to move very soon. Since my dad stop paying on the house, our current house is in foreclosure. Everyday i feel like my family is going to make it through. We went through so many unexpected things. We are waiting for so much better to come in our future. I have a gut feeling about this. Wish us luck ; )

Up until the divorce, I thought I was in control of my life and had actually made real choices. This experience showed me I wasn't. Suddenly there were lawyers and a judge who were in control of my fate. I looked at my whole life and found I had been delusional. I never did have the range of control I had thought. Everything, from what I wore to what I ate and what car I drove, were mostly in the hands of others. The life lesson, in the aftermath, was to find a balance. I can't control everything about my fate, but I can exert more direction.

The most recent that comes to mind,& really freaked me out at the time, happened a few weeks ago. I left the house early, a momentous departure from usual, for an appointment. There were not one but two car accidents on the route I traveled just moments after i passed. I heard the sirens as I arrived at my destination. Several other people were detoured way around them & arrived rather late for their appointments. Fate definitely played a hand for all of us that day, especially those involved in the accident.

I moved to Arkansas from Arizona in 2002 to get married. That didn't work out well for me. But 2 yrs later I met my current husband. I think God brought me to Arkansas to meet him..my soulmate....here's my story!
Three years ago.
We met at a coffee house. I stood next to my car as I watched him pull in. These dating sites don’t give near enough information I thought in frustration. He got out of his truck and walked over and said hello with a southern twang that would make even the most seasoned southerner wince. I sighed. Not my type I thought, but I’m here so I’ll at least go in and get a cup of coffee with him. After all, he did take the time to meet me. I’ll be out in 30 minutes tops I thought to myself and at least I’m not home alone with the dog and TV again!
Four hours later we walked out together. Wow! What an impression he made on me. We hugged goodnight and got in our separate vehicles.
Driving home I wondered if he would call me. Probably not I thought. Way too nice for me. I never get the nice guys. I don’t have that kind of radar.
The next day was full of meetings and I didn’t get a chance to look at my cell until late afternoon. First thing I noticed was that there was a message. Could it be from him?
My fingers kind of tingled as I pressed the buttons on the phone. Sure enough it was from him. Telling me he had a good time last night and would like to go out again and how about dinner Saturday night? His voice was confident yet tentative at the same time. Why he’s a nervous as I am, I thought. Why did that twang suddenly seem so unimportant?
I called him back and we met for dinner that Saturday night. I look back now and smile to myself. He was so sweet. So nice. So polite. I so enjoyed myself.
The kids liked him. The dog liked him. My friends liked him. I loved him.
We had a beautiful Christmas wedding. When he said I do his voice was like music to my ears.
Present time.
We have now been married 8 months and I love him more each day.
Not a bad ending to “he’s not my type”.

I moved to Arkansas from Arizona in 2002 to get married. That didn't work out well for me. However after being divorced for 2 years I met my current husband. I believe that God brought me to Arkansas to meet him...my soulmate. Here's my story of how we met.

My career began as a volunteer through Girl Scouts. I worked 2 hours a week, assisting a Girl Scout troop of deaf girls. 40 years later, I retired after from a career dedicated to deaf and hard of hearing students. It all started because I wanted to earn a service bar.