Quirks

As the years stack up, I should be getting used to these moments but they still surprise me.

We were strolling by the park here in Venice a few weeks ago, and a vacationing couple on a bench reached out to Mamie as we were going by.

 

 This was nothing unusual. Mamie is ridiculously cute and we generally leave a swath of lopsided smiles in our wake. 

Turned out the couple was not only from our state back home, but the husband, a retired teacher, not only once worked with my son’s mother-in-law, but he had also recently repaved the in-laws’ driveway.

A few days before that, the article I was writing on local artist Mary Erickson took me to her studio for the interview. As I entered, a gentleman in the kitchen introduced himself. We did the usual Florida thing of “where are you from?” (Few people in Florida seem to actually be from Florida, particularly in the winter.)

He was an artist himself and had lived for years in Rockport, MA.

My long-time girlfriend from high school, a stained glass artist, had lived there for 20 years before moving to West Virginia. He said they not only knew each other, but had shared space and friends in an old mill full of studios.

Maybe it just that all roads don’t lead to Rome, they lead to Florida.