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syn·chro·nic·i·ty : \ˌsiŋ-krə-ˈni-sə-tē, ˌsin-\ noun : circa 1889
1 : the quality or fact of being synchronous
2 : the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung
ser·en·dip·i·ty: \-ˈdi-pə-tē\ : noun
Etymology: from its possession by the heroes of the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip: Date: 1754
: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; also : an instance of this

My life is filled with lovely words. These two seem particularly pertinent. Every day it seems some  occasion arises--I meet a certain author, or I find a meaningful manuscript--that could not have manifested without one of these magical nouns.

And these happy accidents all seem to be woven together in a larger web of intention. Not like a spider's sticky web trying to trap unsuspecting insects, but like a reassuring net under an acrobat. Or an elaborate rope ladder reaching to unknown places in the clouds.

Here's an example, a tale of three sisters: Years ago on a volunteer project I met Lizzie, a notably  intelligent, creative and kind young woman. I loved her energy and her ideas, and we became friends. She eventually went off to law school; our opportunities to get together and really visit became rare, but always a pleasure. Then I met her sister, Katherine, who was getting ready to publish her first novel. Katherine was just as wonderful as Lizzie, only different. Both were gifts from the universe.

But there was a third sister.  In any fairy tale, things happen in important numbers, three, of course, being one of the biggies. When Shelley, sister #3, moved back to Houston, 1 and 2 asked me if I would talk to her about editing. I wondered if she would be like Lizzie, or like Katherine, and if it would be possible for me to enjoy her as much.

Silly worries, quite unfounded. Number 3--actually the oldest-- is equally delightful, equally unique. A writer, an editor, a linguist and a mom, she was the perfect person to edit a book that had just come in through another serendipitous connection in New Orleans.  I was quite excited about the manuscript, but it needed an editor with a certain combination of skills to transform it from an amazing curriculum to an amazing book.

That book, now published as Oobleck, Slime, and Dancing Spaghetti, is filled with at home science experiments based on children's literature. The author, Jennifer Williams, has won the Presidential Award for teaching.  It's an inspired, cross-curricular approach to getting children interested in science through literature and Shelley's sensibilities were just what was needed to take it from the academic realm to the bookshelf in the family room.  Synchronicity. Serendipity. Or the next logical step in the path. Whatever you call it, the book won a NAPPA award, and we are quite proud of it.

Last weekend, I had an old song on my mind, the theme from the Thomas Crowne Affair.  Every time it spun through my head, it took me somewhere: the first time I saw the original movie with my parents; the album I played endlessly, picking up the needle at the end of the song and carefully moving it back to the starting groove; battalions of men in bowlers;  Renee Russo and Pierce Brosnan strolling Lexington Avenue. And through it all, russet leaves swirling, back and forth, from endings to beginnings.

Humming that tune, I went to a party where I ran into my old friend Lizzie. I came out of my reverie to realize that she had an autumn leaf tucked in her ponytail, and it was just the color of her hair. A tiny thing, but it spoke volumes. Coincidence. Synchronicity. Serendipity.

Lovely.

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it's own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that I said
Lovers walking along the shore,
Leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
As the images unwind
Like the circle that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And the fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

The Windmills of Your Mind
~Alan Bergman

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 When I was in college, I dated a boy from Virginia with a very large family.  Everywhere we went in the Commonwealth,  I was introduced to cousins, aunts and uncles, of every degree.  The way I knew that they were his relatives is that their relationship preceded them: everyone was called Aunt Leticia Baldridge, or Cousin Buthorpington.  Most of them had names of such old stock that John Smith himself would have felt like an upstart newcomer, so it was interesting for me when they found out I was from Texas.  One Aunt--Hezbollah Jane, or whatever her name might have been--actually looked at me over her pince-nez and said, upon learning my state of origin, "Oh, I'm sorry."  Veddy, veddy sorry, I'm sure.

The great majority of the twice, thrice or octoply removed cousins that I encountered were lovely people, but the sheer number of them boggled a person who then had only five first cousins on the planet.  I have more now, but that's a different story, longer than I care to go into right now. Point here is, the idea of a greatly extended family who valued its connectedness to the point of nomenclature, was not only phenomenal, but inspirational. I wanted cousins like that--hordes of kind, interesting people to see on holidays and lesser occasions, to drink tea and juleps with, or perhaps correspond with on Crane's paper about literary ideas or Kilimanjaro trips. There would be trust, openness, and great inspiration. Every day would be lived at the pinnacle of Mazlow's pyramid.

My first real inroads into expanding my circle of trust came when I married the youngest child of a family of eight siblings.  Can't you see the relative clicks adding up?  In laws, outlaws, nieces, nephews, a bounty of riches in the connectedness department.  None of us call each other "Cousin," but that's ok.  It is the 21st century now. Holiday activity increased tenfold, and creativity abounds in my extended family.

But even with all those wonderful people added to my life, I still felt the need for another kind of connectedness.  My current nuclear family started looking for other like-minded families to hang out with on Friday nights, fish with, and such. We have a family of friends here in Houston that we call "the Country Cousins."  They are not related to us, but we love them like they were. All of our children are mildly confused by it. "Are we related?" they ask, and all the grown ups resoundingly  answer, "Yes!" One day they'll understand: love is thicker than water, thicker than beer.

Recently, I have been reminded of the camaraderie of shared work. Spending time creating books with people forms a wonderful kinship, a bond that is somewhat like a family thing, as we go through good times and tough ones together, always with the green-light optimism that more good times are ahead. And I have  found another line of connectedness among these individuals--something that doesn't transcend these primary relationships but augments them like Oxiclean does Tide. It is the Katherine Center Effect, and it flows back and forth between my personal and professional lives like some kind of powerful primordial soup, creating new relationships, strengthening old ones, and enhancing connectedness wherever it flows.

Everyone I encounter these days--everyone to whom I am inexplicable drawn to befriend, or to write a contract for their book, or just to drink coffee with--is linked to Katherine like a Virginia cousin, usually only once or twice removed. Well, you may think, that is logical, because you are a book editor and she is a famous book writer, and you both live in Houston, which is not a book town. And that's where you would be wrong.  On several levels, the first being that Houston is as conducive to the propagation of the book arts as anyplace. Salt Lake City? St. Paul? Oxford, Mississipi? Exeter, New Hampshire? What did those towns have in a meaningful hard-cover way besides a few inspired individuals?

So, here's how it struck me that Katherine is at the center of a web of book people in Houston, a gracious Miss Spider, encouraging other writers and editors to come for tea rather than to become lunch. First, I realized:

1.  Katherine introduced me to Laura Mayes, a kirtsy.com founder and general wizardress, who first became our author and more recently our colleague.
2.  Katherine grew up on the same street as Angela Caughlin, the author of Journaling Through: Unleashing the Power of Your Authentic Self, which we will publish this fall.
3.  Katherine invited me to lunch one day where I got to sit with Karen Walrond, who has since become our author as she pens and shoots The Beauty of Different.
4.  Katherine is connected to the Bright Sky editors: her talented sister is recently responsible for Oobleck, Slime, and Dancing Spaghetti, and her former carpool mate not only edited Angela Caughlin's books, but also The Mother-In Law Manual.
5.  Katherine told Beth Irvine about Bright Sky, leading to a ripple effect of  signs that made it  possible for us to sign Beth up for three exciting books.
6.  Katherine is a graduate of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, making her, in my book, first cousins with a huge number of the amazing authors in town.

Six first degree relationships, and I will not bore you with all they myriad  once-removeds.  But, even recognizing these connections, I had never thought about the incredible enzymatic role my talented friend was playing in Houston until this Friday.

I went to a workshop at Joy Yoga, on Washington Avenue, down the street from  my favorite pizza place. It was lead by Angela Caughlin and Beth Irvine (who also know each other, go figure). It was about combining yoga and guided journaling to go deeper with intention.

I come rushing in, late from busyness and stress, and I hit peace like a wall.  After I smacked into it, I slid into a river of mental and physical submission and let these two powerful ladies have their way with my consciousness and my piriformis as I floated through the next couple of hours.  Only when I reemerged, focused, calm, and content on the other side, did I notice that Karen Walrond was in the workshop, too.  Wow, I thought, Look at all these wonderful women, together.  And the realization spread like a double rainbow in the mountains: They are all Bright Sky authors. That's when it struck me like a bolt that before we connected under Bright Sky, we were connected through Katherine.

So, perhaps she is some sort of literary fairy godmother--a sane Auntie Mame, a well-grounded Durrell, a rosy-cheeked Mrs. Wilcox or even  a kinder, soberer Dorothy Parker--inviting us to lunch, waving her wand over us, opening our eyes to the marvelous potential in one another. In any case, even though her copyright pages pledge her to another, Katherine is an integral part of the Bright Sky family. Love is thicker than imprints, too.

How many more wonderful connections are out there, waiting to be discovered in this creative frontier of a book town? And how many lead back to Cousin Katherine?

We'll just have to stay centered to find out.

It is something-it can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.
~Wallace Stegner

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Quick: What do Yao Ming, Winston Churchill and Jaclyn Smith all have in common?  Three guesses probably won’t suffice, so let’s cut to the chase.  Two summers ago I edited a book about a boy with cerebral palsy.  It is called Window Boy, and it is connecting not only these diverse and notable figures (Jaclyn probably more of a figure than the other gentlemen, although Yao has a pretty striking silhouette) but other notables also.  In fact, Window Boy is getting downright  Kevin Bacon-y.

If you plant good seeds in your life, good things grow.  The interesting thing is that they don’t always grow where you plant them. Window Boy is more like an aspen tree, sending out beautiful runners in every direction. Window Boy tells the story of Sam Davis, a fictional boy in 1968 who should be in sixth grade but has never been allowed to go to school.  Sam watches boys playing basketball out his window, and he longs to be like them. The lady who cleans his house reads to him about Winston Churchill, and Sam learns so much about him that Winnie comes to life in his head and starts encouraging him to go after his dreams of going to school like a regular boy and being involved in the basketball team. Yao, that tall Rocket, read Sam’s story. Now he’s donating copies of Window Boy to children in China who have suffered from the earthquake. Churchill’s message “Never surrender” resonates in many circumstances. Connect Yao.

But Jaclyn Smith?  It turns out that Joanne Herring, recently made re-famous by the movie Charlie Wilson’s War in which she was played by the lovely Julia Roberts, thinks Window Boy would make a great movie.  And, she thinks Jacklyn Smith would make a great mother for Sam. It’s perfect. But where has that angel gotten herself these days? Connect Jacklyn.

Window Boy is all about connection.  The story came about because the author, Andrea White, connected to Houston’s Mayor Bill White by marriage, has a son who loves basketball (like Sam, like Yao).  Andrea wanted to write about Winston Churchill so Middle Schoolers could learn how a stunningly poor student and unloved son could become the most powerful man in the world.  These elements—basketball and Churchill, both rather round-- bounced around in her brain until one Sunday when she was relaxing at home. Her husband was reading the book she wanted to read, so she snuggled in with the New York Times magazine until she could get her hands back on the book.  She read an article by Lisa Belkin about a little boy who had cerebral palsy and was in a mainstream kindergarten class.  Suddenly, this little boy brought Winnie and basketball together in Andrea’s fertile imagination. Connect Lisa Belkin, Winston Churchill and Bill White.

Since Andrea created Sam, she has made connections with other children who are like him, and they are out making connections of their own.  Andrea met a boy named Gary Lynn who also has cerebral palsy.  She met him through the Rockets.  Turns out that much like Sam, he is an avid sports fan.  As a highschooler, he has already chaired a celebrity golf tournament to raise money for cerebral palsy.  When his mother read Andrea’s story about Sam, she said it could have been written about Gary. Connect a real boy, who is out there being an advocate.

Literacy Advance honored Andrea as a Champion of Literacy, and they made the connection with Winston Churchill’s great grandson, Jonathan Sandys.  Jonathan, who looks a good bit like his sainted great grand, thinks that Window Boy gives the most accurate portrait of Churchill’s character that he has ever run across.  And since he runs Churchill’s Britian, an organization dedicated to keeping the memory of Churchill alive, he knows a good bit about the old chap. Jonathan had such fun in Houston, he’s relocated here.  He threw a birthday bash for his great grandfather in December at Downing Street. Connect an ex-pat Brit and a cigar bar.

Another brilliant young person who also happens to have cerebral palsy appeared on the scene in Houston. Jemma Leach won a poetry contest, and her poem was lovely.  She and Andrea were all set to be honored at a luncheon to raise money for the River, an arts organization that makes art experiences accessible to children who for a variety of reasons—physical conditions, economic conditions—might not be able to experience the wonders of creativity—and its ability to bring us out of our caves and into the sunlight together. Ike put the ki-bosh on the luncheon, but the connection was made.

Sam Davis, the window boy, is out there. Born of connection, he’s making new connections. And every time a new link is forged, we realize that, as Brene Brown says, “there is no us and them.  There is only us.”  Sam Davis, Yao Ming, Jacklyn Smith, Lisa Belkin, Gary Lynn, Joanne Herring, Andrea White, Jemma Leach, Jonathan Sandys, you and me and Kevin Bacon. Strange bedfellows. As the seeds of understanding planted by one middle school book’s inspiration blossom all around us, we’re shaving off the degrees of separation.

Only connect.
 

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