The Brothers Feldman & Ancient Emails
Episode 10:02:2023 - Prompt: Coincidence
Where Coincidence took me…
It’s said that every picture tells a story.
In the case of the photograph of the five Feldman brothers at my aunt & uncle’s house in Philadelphia, the story seems to be of a good time. Perhaps after my cousin’s bat mitzvah… I vaguely recall someone telling me that.
No one lined the brothers up in an order. It’s not by age. It’s how they assembled together in front of a swimming pool for a photo.
So what is the coincidence?
They are standing in the order of how they ultimately died (left to right).
This makes me think about where I stand in group photos!
Which brings me to a more important coincidence…
I made sure I had a job when I moved from NYC to LA…
After working years as a bartender and restaurant manager while finishing my graduate degree, I decided I needed a job in the field I had just spent time & money studying.
It wasn’t easy to parlay an entry level job in film or TV in New York and make the same money as I had as a bartender. Not even comparable.
I figured I should live where the mines are, if I am a coal miner.
Figuratively speaking, of course.
I cast a super wide net to everyone I knew, asking if there was work in production, development, as an assistant, or anything in the business.
My only caveat: I had to make the same bartending wage per week.
I didn’t care if I worked more hours or days, but I couldn’t come home with less than I made as a bartender.
I promised myself I would not take a job in food service (my go-to).
My lovely production coordinator job shut down about six weeks after I arrived in LA. I learned about unemployment. About driving to Calabasas for interviews for jobs that would never pan out to prove I was seeking employment.
And I finally got a job at ICM, a talent agency in Beverly Hills.
It was great! Our department - below the line - was like a family. I worked with interesting talent, cinematographers, editors, production designers.
And I had time to write.
One day, I received an email from a catering company desperate for staff for a party at the Huntington Library. I’m not sure why, but I said I’d work if I was in the kitchen.
I thought of it as a day outside, on a beautiful location, making money.
And that’s when I met my love, my partner for life. On that day.
What’s the coincidence?
Years later when I was cleaning out my inbox, I found staffing emails from the catering company. (I was on their list because my Ex had worked there a few times).
It turns out my partner and I were scheduled to work together one year before the day we met, but I didn’t go. It would have been my partner, his Ex, me, and my Ex - although there were no Ex’s at the time.
That meeting would have just been a forgettable catering gig.
One year later, we were both free & ready to meet!
YOUR TURN: When thinking about coincidences, I started to realize that there had to be more than luck at play. It seemed like there were specific details, including time lapses (either into the past or the future) that proved a series of events or circumstances to be a coincidence.
Where does COINCIDENCE take you?
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Happy writing!
A few years ago, during writing class, I read a draft selection from the middle of my book. Perhaps because the story had to do with my first marriage, juggling children, job, household and entertaining, one of my classmates noted a parallel with Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea. I didn’t remember having read the book but knew I had a copy on a shelf at Vanaprastha, like a pretty shell on display. Over that weekend during an afternoon lull and too tired to write, I decided to organize the books piled in my den and on shelves here and there around the house from guest room, bedroom to basement. There in the oyster bed of the basement was my father’s copy of Gift from the Sea. He had written a dedication to my daughter with the idea that she would pass the book along to her two cousins and her brother—all four ‘moon shell’ grandchildren. At various parts of the book, my father wrote notes, the most telling at the end of Chapter 1, The Beach: “Give yourself some solitude,” told his grandchildren. “Fear it not! Let your ‘inner’ selves tell you who you are, what to do.” Huh, I said to myself. I had reached that point in my life where I treasured solitude, the shedding of distraction, hypocrisy and vanity, the creativity of work and relationships and purposeful giving. Letting go of false ambition, pride of possessions, and the mask of ego. This is liberation, according to Anne Morrow Lindbergh. My classmate’s comment, finding the book and my father’s words, coincidence?
It is the coincidence that keeps on giving. I call him our little Christmas miracle because he showed up and plopped down in the gravel driveway on December 25th. A little black ball of fur perfectly framed by our front window. How can someone abandon a puppy on Xmas day? Did they know something about us? Something about the increased odds of adoption on a holiday? The whole village knew we hadn’t had a dog for six months, a mourning period brought on by the murder of the family’s 12-year-old podenco, Pod. We had recently been thinking about finding a new dog with very specific attributes and, whaddyaknow, there he was. At times you must accept the message, take the plunge, and welcome the responsibility. We kept him, now call him Ragazzo, “The Gatz” for short. He is pure love.
When opportunity comes knocking, be ready, take it. The signs are out there, to be noticed into destiny.