• The woman who took my birthday cake order over the phone is German (like me).  Her name is Annaliese and she is from the  Pfalz.  Annaliese was also the name of my sister-in-law, who was also from the  Pfalz.  Annaliese is ALSO the name of one of my best friends from childhood, who also shares my birthday!

• On the day of my birthday, my doctor decided to make a house-call and visit me.  Turns out he too  shares my birthday.

• Also on my birthday, a deer strayed onto the George Washington Bridge. In German, the word “deer”means “Reh”. If you reverse my maiden name, Herbig, you get Gibreh, or in English, give deer. Hirsch also means deer.

• Two days after my birthday, my friends, Wayne Thiel and Fred Hirsch, came to wish me a belated Happy Birthday and brought me an adorable small bowl. The amazing thing is the bowl’s adornment. From its rim grows a tree, shaped like a leaf, and next to it a tiny house. I have many wonderful associations with the leaf and have written many poems about it.

• During their visit, we discussed Edgar Cayce.  The very next day I received the June 2016 Edgar Cayce Venture Inward invitation in the mail. On the bottom of the first page I read “Your Body-Mind-Spirit Resource Since 1931”. I was born in 1931.

• A few days later, a fellow Black Sheep reader, Marian  Rogers, called.  Every Thursday she reads me a chapter from her book, Astonishments, which was reviewed  in Black Sheep, over the phone. I have bad eyes. This time, Marian told me she had just finished writing a little story and had given it the title Clever Girl. Well, well. The astonishments never cease. I told her that I was reading on my iPad, in the largest font possible, Tessa Hadley’s book, Clever Girl, right at the moment the phone rang. Pretty neat, hm?

Ute Kaboolian