I try to greet each day with certain activities that are healthy for me or that send a good message to my unconscious mind.

I aim to perform a few minutes of stretching shortly after rolling out of bed. After reviewing the previous day, I’ll record five things I want to acknowledge myself for. Then, I’ll feed my dog breakfast and we’ll go out for our morning walk.

Of course, this plan can get derailed if I give in to the urge to check my email.

It’s a mystery to me why I come down with a serious case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) some weekday mornings, but I do.

Just a couple days ago, still wearing the loose fitting tee I wore to bed, I sat at my dining table in front of my laptop, splayed open to provide a quick scan of my inbox like a frog with its skin pulled back might have been displayed on a lab table in my high school biology class.

I quickly opened a notice from Amazon announcing that a gift recipient of a kindle version of The Best of No Small Thing — Mindful Meditations had just accepted the download.

I gifted the eBook to several friends and potential reviewers back in December. A few people picked up theirs right away. Many did not.

And, here I saw that somebody who was very important in my life at one time, showed me that she wanted to see what I was up to. Out of the blue!

To say that this gesture from Miriam was a surprise does not adequately describe how I felt. I know meteors exist. I just don’t expect to see a shooting star from my back deck. I have occasionally Googled her name to see what she had been up to, but I can’t recall having had any sort of correspondence with her since a couple years after I left Madison.

My time in Madison, most of 2008, was a difficult period. At fifty-one and under-employed, I moved to the famous college town because I thought I needed to shake things up in my life. I knew a few people there and always enjoyed my visits. I liked cheese.

I discovered that it was no easier to get a job across the state border, that the Dane County locals had a different sense of humor than they had in Chi-town (I discovered this when I bravely signed up for an improv class), and that it was more than deep dish pizza I missed.

I started hanging out with a distant cousin and her family on Friday evenings. Having never met the family during my first fifty years, it was amazing how welcoming they were, including me frequently at their Sabbath table. They relieved some of my loneliness.

I also held on to some sense of myself by joining a contemplative writing group. Most Thursday evenings, eight women gathered for tea and writing exercises. What we wrote during our time together was not for publication or even for a specific purpose.

We wrote for ourselves and we witnessed each other. We honored each other’s process and unique spark. We also gave each other space when nothing came. Sometimes, this was what was called for.

Miriam Hall facilitated.  As Herspiral Contemplative Writing, I think her reputation as a writer and teacher has only grown. Even though my blog has its unique purpose and my writing reflects my joy and pain, my relationship with words, my point of view — to a large extent, I can write now because she made it feel safe.

I smiled for several hours at the thought of her downloading my book. I wrote an email of thanks knowing that I might or might not hear back. The notice of the gift being “picked up” made me deliriously happy.

It was so unexpected when I thought about the months that passed between purchasing the download and getting word that the transfer had been completed.

But, as I thought about the situation more, I concluded that only the timing was a surprise. The bond had already been created.

Recognizing that an event that seems to come out of the blue actually represents a connection that always existed and can never be taken away is no small thing.