The synchronicity of happenings makes me wonder. Today, February 17th, would be my late daughter, Kate’s birthday. This month of love has been full of  synchronicities. Two days ago my husband Dave and I were flipping through  channels and there was the Lawrence Welk Show from the sixties. Pausing there  for a moment because there was a tap dancer on I said,  “That’s how Kate danced.” I could visualize my own daughter tapping those steps long ago.  Kate taught tap as a teenager.”She could tap dance like a broadway star,” I said at her memorial. Then yesterday, the 16th, I was in a boutique buying jeans and the song,“Jitterbug” by George Michael came over the speaker  yet  it was playing louder than normal. Kate tap danced to the song in one of her school recitals. I hadn’t heard the song in years.

This healing road I’ve taken since her passing has been  full of synchronicity. A cardinal’s been at my feeder now for a month. I hadn’t seen one in ten years there except the day my precious dog Sassi had surgery and lived. Cardinals are scarce in my town in the Arizona desert but are said to be a sign angels are near. Synchronicities help me write my novels and blogs. A friend gave me the angel  in the photo below. For over 20 years I’ve placed her in the western window where as the sun sets she casts a shadow on the wall. Looking at the angel gives me peace and so I  wrote the shadows’ theme in my novel, The Angel’s Daughter. Hannah, a half angel asks, “Am I just  just a shadow of an angel?” Yet in the happy ending she finds her very angelness and moves forward with her life just as I have. Synchronicities are surely heavens’ messages. I know not only angels are near but Kate is always near. “What’s heaven like,”  I once wrote her in a poem, “Are  rainbows everywhere?”  Somewhere over the rainbow the synchronicities are forming a snowflake like pattern, a loving heavenly design. 

Someone placed this rock with BE GRATEFUL written on it in my front yard. Who was it? I’ll probably never know. I kept it there for many months as a reminder for all those times in my life I experienced sadness, worry and fear and how  I would press forward towards the light gratefulness brings.

I’ve found it’s getting easier to feel grateful and blessed as the years go by. I passed the Be Grateful rock on to someone special to me. For one summer Arizona day an unknown angel on earth placed a heaven sent message on a rock in my front yard. Now I know the angels meant for me to pass  on it to you.

My twins Liz and Mike  have been such treasures in my life. When I was writing my first novel, The Angel’s Daughter, Liz was in graduate school. An avid reader, she edited the first draft of my manuscript with a red pen. Her ability as an editor amazed me. On the plane going home from our visit she called me as I sat on the runway,”Mom, I saw a man running down the street with angel wings tattooed on his back. Make Sam’s character  have angel wing  tattoos!” Thus Sam, the despicable character as Hannah’s ex- boy friend and writing professor,  was given large  angel wing tattoos on his back which he proudly shows off in the novel on TV interviews.

My son, Mike, a television writer. gave me a beautiful butterfly birthday card the year after my husband passed away . He wrote,”I know the last few months have been hard, but I want you to know how proud I am of you.  You still have your wings and you’ll fly again soon,” Serendipity was ever present as there was a bush outside my hotel in LA that day filled with yellow flowers visited by many lovely  butterflies. This card became a theme in my last novel, Town of Angels. Mike’s quote is part of the story in the novel.  Angel Ken, the main character, sends butterflies to his flock of people in the fantasy town of Mystic Bay,California to sooth and calm troubled minds. And using one more of his wondrous angel gifts he guides the towns’ bully to an awakening of spirit.

People come into our lives and with small gestures make such life changing impacts on us. Liz and Mike have grown up to be kind, thoughtful and talented people.  They have used  wings of hope to realize their own dreams.  I am blessed to know and be the mother of these twin angels on the writers’ shoulders. Happy Birthday  today, January 2,2020, Liz and Mike!

This is  the letter I sent to a department store for Santa. The department store then gives a donation for each letter they receive to a charity for children. Shouldn’t helping  children in need in our world be at the top of our own lists at Christmas time and always? Giving is surely an ingredient of Love.