The man hobbled down the snowy,

icy sidewalk with tripod footed cane

in hand. Ready to cross the street to

 

my car and the waiting Chocolate Lab

in the back seat who looked at me

longingly, I said, “Be careful.” He

 

said, “You bet.” As he turned to enter

the restaurant, he said, looking

blankly ahead, almost as if on auto-

 

matic pilot, “I was in a terrible auto

accident.” It’s what you do. You just

blurt it out, keep telling the story over

 

and over until you get it straight or

right, your right, anywhere, anytime;

why not an icy street to a stranger?

 

He didn’t say it for me; it was for the

man with the tripod cane, but it’s

what I knew; what I remembered.

 

It is what I am an expert in. It was

like riding a bike. It all came back

flooding my brain instantly. It was

 

then I recognized the stooped

figure for the noble prince, the

knight in shining armor, he who

 

rode the white horse, the one

who ever and always sat next

to Arthur at the round table, the

 

keeper of the faith, the one cry-

ing in the wilderness, the pacifist

follower of Jesus fighting for the

 

underdog, fighting for justice.

And then the unexpected, horr-

ific hit him like a car crashing

 

head on into his headlights leav-

ing him in the shock of the death

grip of utter darkness while wheels

 

spun in the flashing red lights  with-

out touching pavement. His wife of

nearly sixty years had been killed

 

in the head on crash. My late

wife had died in twenty-four hours,

twenty-one years ago on a hot,

 

sunny, summer’s day in Florida of

a cerebral hemorrhage crashing

through her brain. We hugged,

 

shed tears, and remembering all

those who had been there for me,

I asked him to have lunch just to

 

talk and perhaps, not perhaps, but

of course, cry in our warm, thick,

comforting late autumn soup.

 

Serendipity sounds too simple; synchron-

icity? Perhaps providence happened on

a snowy sidewalk on a Saturday in November.