Coincidental Gifts

Delight - joy, enchantment, amusement, to revel in, to relish

I was sitting in a neighborhood coffee shop the other day doing some writing when an older woman walked in - and I immediately knew her. Clear across town months before I had taken a photograph of she and her grandson sitting at a red café table by a window, their faces washed in sunshine - looking at each other with absolute joy. I had come to this bakery in Bexley - owned by the daughter of the grandmother and mother to the boy in the photo - to take photographs of the weekly gathering of musicians. Those photos turned out fine, nothing special really but it was that photograph of a grandmother and grandson that gave me that wonderful feeling of “ahhh” when I pulled it up on my computer screen. One word came to mind "delight" - they were clearly delighted with one another.. As with most of my photos, it’s usually the ones that I have not noticed, that seem to take themselves, that turn out to be affirmations. I had the photo enlarged. framed and gave to the bakery owner.

Now today, almost a year later, speaking with the grandmother, she tells me that the photo is on her dining room wall, that she receives numerous compliments on it.  I tell her that that photograph is one of my all-time favorites, that it reminds me of the way I felt about my grandmother and how she felt not just about me but about my brothers as well.  What were the chances that I would have run into this lovely kind woman, clear across town, in a Starbucks that I hadn’t been to in weeks? That photograph was a gift, running into that grandmother was another one.

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