Turtle Rock

My life has been full of rather weird coincidences. Among the most extraordinary incudes the first conversation I had with my older sister shortly after she found me. As many of you already know, I grew up an only child in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s. I never knew that the parents who raised me were not my biological parents until at the age of 55, I received a phone call from a private investigator that she had hired to find me. She had spent most of her life looking for me without even knowing my name. When she was just 12 years old, a school mate had told her that she “had a brother out there.” After confirming that with her Granny, she eventually approached the woman who had arranged for my hand-off on a country road at the base of the mountain on which I was born two weeks prior. Dot couldn’t remember much about that childless couple except that they were friends of her brother and stationed at the navy shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia.

Neatly 55 years after that fateful day, Dot, was going through some old boxes in her attic and discovered a Christmas greeting card that she had received from them on the occasion of their first Christmas as a family of three. The card contained my baby picture inscribed with my name and the date and thanking her for all her help. She subsequently contacted my sister and gave her my name. After running into a number of dead ends, my sister hired the investigator who found me nearly a year later.

It was during our first telephone conversation that she asked me what I did for a living. I told her that I worked in commercial television producing commercials among other things. When I asked her what she did, she told me she was embarrassed to say. I asked her if it was illegal at which point she laughed a bit and said “no, she drove a forklift at a Coors brewing plant.” Nothing wrong with that, right?

It was when she told me that her oldest daughter’s name was Pam that I couldn’t believe my ears. I told her that my wife’s name was Pam also. Her response hit like a ton of bricks when she said that her daughter’s middle name was Denese. My wife was also Pamela Denise. The only differences was an “e” and an “i.”

There’s yet another first and middle name coincidence in this story. I had always been told that I was born in a car in the Albemarle County, Virginia, countryside. My sister assured me that I was actually born in a log cabin in the mountains of Madison, Virginia and that I had an Aunt Paige, who was my biological grandfather’s sister.

Years before learning all that, my first granddaughter was born and named Madison Paige!.

Coincidence or divine intervention? You may draw your own conclusions but I tend to lean towards the latter option.