parallel lives

This morning, as I was wondering how I will ever manage to pull off a graduate thesis when I've lost both my credit card and my thumb drive in the space of a few hours, I got a wonderfully newsy email from my father.

(My father, for those of you who don't know, is a farmer's boy from Indiana, raised by a widowed mother, who went on to get a doctorate in religious history and is now one of the most respected authorities on Quakerism in the country. Preen, preen.)

Part of his work directing Friends' Center is to bring in various speakers, and in his email he is describing the visit of a bestselling Quaker author:

"...After that, I took her to lunch...that went 2 1/2 hours, as somehow it came out in an off-hand comment that one of our daughters had married a Taoist - and this expression came over her face! Turns out that her first marriage was to an American who had embraced a cultic form of Taoism, was her teacher, was 26 years older, made up the rules as he went along, was overweeningly controlling, and whom she finally had the good sense to leave with her children after about 6 - 8 years! As we shared stories and vignettes, it was just too bizarre for words how totally similar everything was!

She is writing a chapter in her book about it... she lives in N.C. now over near Chapel Hill, with her new husband & two children; they have a small farm, cabin with guest house, and animals."

What I fervently hope is that the odd synchrony in our lives continues long enough for me to get to the farm part.

Also: I have a new bike! This is my equivalent of a sporty convertible. I've been biking around all morning in leather gloves and a head scarf, a la Grace Kelly. Betcha Grace Kelly never got her skirt caught in the gears, though.