It began as a strange kind of journey. I was only peripherally aware of her. She was a young girl, one of many who had passed through this small organization that did so much. Just before a big event, they needed some help. I had heard they were short handed and in fact had received a job description from the CEO via email asking me to send it around to try and help them find the right person for the job. The event was looming and this was only one reason someone was quickly needed. An election cycle was on its way and that requires all hands on deck. I wasn’t doing anything but a bit of consulting work that was soon going to end. I had no interest in something full time, but for a few weeks I was willing to put some time in and decided to let them know I was available.

I was at an event with my friends and walked up to her as she stood behind a counter, addressing the needs of the guests.

Finding myself and her alone, I said, “Hey, I heard you needed some help, I can come downtown and help you out for a while”. I started to say something else, but she quickly brightened as only a child would at seeing a human ice cream cone, or something she desired very much.

“Really?? Really Sari, you would like to help out?” Sure I said suddenly realizing that this was somehow monumental and I was getting caught up. “Sure,” I said.

“Okay I will confirm it with Tom and call you, oh, thank you so much.”

I don’t think I had been needed with quite so much emotionally telling gusto in years. The nearest I could remember was something my children may have wanted in Disney World. 

Soon I was traveling into the city to actually work. A two week stint turned out to be slightly over a year and would have been more, but my health was not cooperating.

What is important to share here is what happened on the very first day. We set out to do some banking together for the office. In a three person office everyone does everything, well just about. We huddled together on the street, in that lovely afternoon sun in November and she turned to me and said, “You know I really want to be a lawyer.”

She had been there almost three years at that point, the longest anyone had been his assistant; and trust me it was a record. I turned to her face, this young woman, just 25 years old, and the sun lit us both up and I said, “Well, then we can do that.”

She looked at me, a bit quizzically. I told her I had wanted to be a lawyer many years earlier, I could never seem to fulfill that wish. Hers was a brilliant mind, with the grades and track record to prove it, with a finance degree from a difficult school. She, who almost single handedly managed the inner workings of a power house political pac, got mostly no credit for all the difficult stuff, while the person in charge, Tom, got the glory but rightly so for his very difficult public role. However, this other stuff was important, very important too.

That year we did what they regularly did, the complete impossible under terrific budget constraints in an election cycle and not without considerable angst. We also started a dialog which led to a process to achieve her goal. She took a Kaplan Course for the LSAT and told the boss it was a pottery class. Her mother who lived in another state, with modest means, said she would pay for the course. It was long, it was difficult and she slugged her way through it. All this on top of a job that took every bit of energy, including many, many late nights and weekends. It hardly seemed possible, but if you know anything about politics you must understand.

In the very middle of all this, she re-met someone in our city who had been a part of her life from her home town states away. He was her high school prom date in fact, and she somehow re-discovered all that she had missed being just friends with him in that distant past. She felt in balance. I could feel the stars aligning. Fate seemed to be pushing her, listening to her, her life began to blossom with lots of change. Dream after dream was reaching a fulfillment stage, effort after effort true to the mark. Soon an acceptance from a prestigious law school and a move toward letting those who would need to know, finally know.

I sat out, at home, her last successful months at her long held job due to an injury, but I continued to be there when she needed me to vent, to ask advice, to tell, to be. I watched her evolve, to fly freely. I know she was a strong one, because everything she had done to the point of our paths linking helped prove that. She was resourceful, capable and smart. What I understand is that every new step, sometimes takes new strength and she and I were aligned for a reason. Her doubts bounced off my confidence in her and her ability to recognize her momentum inspired me to see my own.

There were many moments when this was very clear. Strangely for both of us this was true. I began to use more of my gifts in different ways.

Closing in on the finish of law school and preparing for a marriage, I know the path was being paved for her by many unseen hands. She had only to step on and take the ride to where she was driven.

The father who died when she was very young and his father who died when he was very young have had their hands in it, what was about to take place.

We talked through all the desperation, the longing, the pain, the changes all that brought, her anger, her life now. It is best described when she was feeling very lost one day. We spent many, many hours alone working.

Her relief had always been a good friend who would call many times a day. How she could talk and work at the same time often baffled me; being so much older and apparently less focused. I mean that as a high compliment to her and to me, an acceptance of my age.

These two shared the world. This girl had married most grandly on a family estate in northern Europe. She was happy and doing all the things a young wife might. Yet, as all things do, change between the friends was inevitable on some level, they were no longer single together and our Brittany had no boyfriend, at least not a lasting one. This was a sequence of dates and dalliances as I like to refer to the subject, not unlike a period in my life at around the same age. All life was evolving. It was not the same but the same. It was all different but not bad. She was somehow lonely in the midst of all that needed doing. Breathless breaks were spent hugging her pet cats and her many friends, both male and female, had bar nights planned too. This was something fun, games, and special haunts, but she was still a single lady.

We used to give ourselves little breaks now and then. The CEO was often out or came in very, very late. He stayed late, and his weekends were often not his own, so all in all, it waxed and waned him being there. It was sometimes like a retro 50’s office when he was around, not unlike some of the Mad Men dynamic, but not quite. He was gay, a hand full at times of energy and purpose and we definitely took a lot of direction, oh, and jumped up and scampered to his office to announce/screen his calls as he liked. This old body did most of the youthful scampering, as the youthful person who had previously did the scampering had delegated that. I didn’t mind as I did not want to do the state accounting filings or any of the complicated accounting brain work. I also did not want to be running around doing the errands and banking.

So I popped her a couple of bucks to stop for coffee now and then and she did all the outside “scampering”. She honestly liked to get out, breath the fresh air, and escape. I liked my pain more direct, so scampering to announce was definitely my gig. Also data entry and fooling around with all sorts of correspondence, handwriting notes in my boss’s style of writing with his special note cards, you get it right?There was so much more that filled out our time, donors, events, board meetings, candidate questionaires, tracking of various projects, and various filings.

So our breaks might be to run to Macy’s to decide which dress looked best for the fundraiser or a cookie run, occasionally a lunch break, but the best were the morning breakfast breaks.

Extremely rare, but none the less fantastically wonderful.  I got up at around 5:00 am, caught a 6:50 or 7:08 am train, hit the downtown station at 8:15 am, if it was an express, then walked a mile to the office or took a cab, if I felt like being babied. I refused to acknowledge the bus I could have taken because that would have required being with even more humanity than on the train. On the train I could sit on the upper deck in a single seat, oblivious of people. I could snooze or read, or most precious of all think. I did not have time to do that usually. I was always doing, doing and doing some more.

One day we allowed ourselves to have breakfast out. We went to an odd little diner, not too far to walk to, some little Greek place, with pancakes. I ordered a pecan waffle and she had the big round golden pancakes. She told me how her dad used to make her pancakes and how much she missed him.

She had spoken of her dad before. She missed him, he was her Superman. She was crying for the life that had changed so abruptly and all the things that little girls cry for when they have had a much beloved father. Her dad had died in an accident when he was quite young and she was in grade school. She described how they had the world in their hands as a family, her last family vacation to Disney World and how it all changed, so dramatically.

Life got hard and her mom and sister clung together to scratch out a good existence. Then her mom met someone and remarried. She was angry about that too, at least she was then. Then their financial life really hit the skids through a bad investment and life changed once again. It got harder. But she kept working on her dreams and being the smart cookie she was, her steps were forward. But the pain, it was still there.

A little copper penny was on the table. It was shiny defying everyone to be seen in such a grey little place. I asked her something which for some is going to be bordering on the weird.

“Have you seen any little pennies lately in strange places?” She looked at me oddly. She answered me slowly and confused. “ I have seen pennies before.”

“Sometimes people we love try to let you know they are thinking of you in a funny way. They seem to be able to throw pennies around in your path. I don’t know how they do it, but it seems likely that it is possible. I think, well, your dad is with you, and wants you to know he loves and cares about you very much. I think he sent his penny to you here now. Just to remind you he loves you and is around. ” Perhaps he knew I could tell her and she would listen.

She looked at the penny laying there in all its copper glory, neither of us had seen it when we sat down in the booth. We examined it, she held it, and as if seeing a penny for the first time, she gave me an incredulous look. The year it was minted, was the year her dad had passed away from this world.

She told me she had been seeing pennies here and there. I told her that I felt her father''s love surrounded her everyday.

I told her I thought she needed to be happy, to let go of the past anger. To try to see things in the present, what is here right now and work with it, feel encouraged, be happy. She asked me to bring books about all this kind of seeing. I had told here I would but I never did. I wanted her to move in the direction of the dreams she could see herself in this world now. 

 - 

 Years have now passed. She recently sent an email about something and when I responded I mentioned writing about the Pancakes and Pennies to her. Here is her reponse:

“Pancakes and Pennies - I love it.   I think a lot about both of those things.  I still find pennies, a lot.  Sometimes when I really need to find them.  And it is comforting, thank you for being the medium and making the connection for me.  That was a moment when my hair stood on end, it just made the universe make sense.”

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 Is this one of the great unanswered mysteries of the universe? Have we lived before? Do we "know" each other? What is it that draws us to each other? Do we have paths which must cross? Do we speak for those who can no longer speak, who are we, and how do we enable the existence and life path of others?  Are there spiritual sensitives? Are some mediums for others to "see" and find peace?

Are we all just travelers that keep traveling in endless circles to help each other and to help ourselves? Who are we?

In the context of Christianity, are there angels that guide us? Do they impart something to each of us to help our own existence and the existence of others? Are we the force or is it them?

Too many questions, too few answers. Do we need all the questions answered or should we just live, as we do? Live and once in a while find ourselves inexplicably drawn into a web of something, where for several moments in time, we show the ladder of existence to someone who must climb it. 

Transmigration of the soul? 

 Copyright 2012 by SheilaTGTG55