Yes, today is an exciting day! It is the release of A Map of Her Own, my fifth book set in the Pacific Northwest. Thank you to Bedazzled Ink Publishing for, once again, helping me get my stories out. So, I’ll begun by encouraging you to check it out. If you have enjoyed any of my earlier works or blogs, I suspect this one will interest you too. More about it and how to get a copy on my book page.

But what my heart wants to write about today are the often surprising and beautiful opportunities we have to connect with each other. And no surprise, but my books are filled with such stories. After all, when you first meet Celia in Humanity’s Grace, she feels compelled to learn more about Frank’s death, and to learn who he was. In a Map of Her Own, Celia furthers her quest to figure out Paul and to learn about a distant relative, Emma. What I have learned as I create these fictional tales is how many opportunities we have to connect with people during our real life journey, even if some connections last only a few moments.

I got a real-life lesson this week after receiving an Instagram message. Only a bit earlier my iphone shouted out “Your website stats are booming!” In today’s world of scammers and spam, I check out my site when this happens. Soon after, I responded to the Instagram message, shared my phone number and within a few minutes was talking to a distant cousin, Mary, who lives in Massachusetts but was visiting Portland. As it turns out, we share our great great grandfather J.K. Gill. As she searched for info about his long-ago downtown PDX store, she found blogs written by ….yes, me. Many of them, as it turns out.

The lesson to me was to listen to my heart. I suggested a downtown coffee date (into a busy day) while she was still in town. After all, what an opportunity, don’t you think? And as we sat at Java Coffee downtown (where PDX is not burning, by the way), my newly found cousin thumbed through the first two volumes my mother so diligently put together when tracking down Dad’s family history. This history Dad loved to tell, but he lacked any interest to persevere in information sleuthing and story organizing like Mom .

It’s no surprise there are a number of us still around related to J.K. Gill. Some I know well, including my Dad’s two close, local cousins. After all, J.K. and his wife Frances Willson Gill (daughter of early Oregonians Chloe Clark Willson and William Willson) had one son and five daughters, including my great grandmother Georgia. So yes, Mary and her husband and I sipped our coffee and chatted, as they explored the notebooks, Mary even finding her own name in the generational researching Mom had completed. Notebooks full of writings and stories and photos and news articles. I temporarily left the albums in their appreciative hands, arranging for a later pickup. And yes, I know we are now connected for continued sharing of questions, answers and stories.

Does any of this matter? Do any of the impromptu coffee dates and phone calls and sidewalk chats we add to sometimes busy days matter in the big picture of life. Absolutely. They fill us with compassion, curiosity and opportunities to connect with another human, even if they only last minutes. Much like the epilogue I wrote in Beyond the Ripples, quoted from a fictional essay teenage Annie writes.

Yes, Annie. I believed this back when I wrote it and even more today. And as I’ve said before. The more we pay attention and notice, the more opportunities I believe we encounter.

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