Every summer my sister-in-law, Elizabeth Phillian, presented us with tickets to the world famous Palisades Amusement Park in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, where she and her husband lived. So when they told us they had a house they wanted us to move into, in Cliffside Park, the children were thrilled. Alas, the very year we moved here from Queens, it was in 1971, they tore the amusement park down, and built twin 31 story luxury apartment buildings on its grounds instead. They named them Winston Towers 200 and 300 respectively.
     In this for us so eventful year of 2002 - we lost my husband, our dear Haigaz, at the age of 98 - our daughter, who had been living in the Winston Towers for two years, asked me to move in with her. To give us more room she sold her one bedroom apartment, and bought a two bedroom in the same building. My son Corky, the real estate agent in charge of selling her erstwhile condo, and of buying the bigger one, is amazed.
     "You'll never guess who showed your apartment today," he said to his sister.
     "Who?"
     "The buyer of aunt Elizabeth's house when we settled her estate. That's who. He told me he's been a realtor for years now. Isn't that weird?"
     "Very."
     "Yeah, after so many years of living in the same town, and being in the same business, and never once running into him? Only now? When you're selling your apartment? That's more than weird."

     Within a few days there were two interested buyers for the one bedroom condo: Theresa, an Armenian, and a young Russian couple. The Russians beat Theresa out, but for a while all we heard was, "Theresa, Theresa..."
     In the meantime, Corky was looking for somewhere to live on his own  because we were selling the house on Greenmount Avenue where we both still lived . Coming back from an appointment with the landlord of his new studio apartment Corky says, "Mom, you'll never believe what happened. The former tenant was there. And guess who it is."
     "No idea. Who?"
     "Theresa."
     "You mean the woman who almost got Diane's place?"
     "Yeah, she didn't get it, but I got hers.. I almost fell over backwards when she opened the door. She too. We just stared at each other. How crazy is that? I bet this beats all your so called coincidences, right?"
     "Absolutely. It's wild."
     "Yes I think so. It's amazing."

     December 17, 2002, the movers came for my furniture. I kept my bed and some overnight things because I would be going back and forth between the old and the new place until the actual closing. The foreman, Steve, asked me how long we had been living here in this house on Greenmount Avenue.
     "31 years," I answered. "I was born in '31, and I'm moving into a 31 story building. I moved here in '71, and I'm 71 years old." It occurred to me later that our zip is 07010, another 71 if you ignore the zeros.
     "My father would have been 71 today. Today is his birthday. December 17," Steve said.
     "My birthday is June 17, I said, and thought, 71 and 17; I love reversals. "When did your father die?" I asked Steve.
     "In 1987."
     "Well, what do you know?" I said."My father was born in 1887." A reversal of another kind, I thought. One father died, and the other was born in '87, a century apart.
     The buyer of our house is a young woman my daughter's age who will have her mother move in with her also. The listing agent is, of course, my son Corky, and the buyer's agent is Bill Martin. The first and only occupant of this house before us was a Mr. Arthur C. Martin.

     I thought that this was the end of the story but I was wrong. We celebrated a rare white Christmas in our new home as always with a real tree. On New Year's Eve, which is also my youngest son Richard's birthday, we were all together: the four of us, and five guests. I heard Richard say, "Do you people know that this was the first white Christmas in 31 years? They talked about it on the news." Well, I thought, that would have been in 1971, the first Christmas our family spent in Cliffside Park, and the year they tore down Palisades Amusement Park to put up Winston Towers where we find ourselves today.

     On January 2, 2003, two men from the fire department came to our house to check on the smoke alarms for the certificate of occupancy for the new owners. Out of the blue, one of them, looking me straight in the eye, says to me, "I've been a volunteer fireman for 31 years!"
     Wow! I can't help thinking, he's not only a volunteer fireman but also volunteered this for me quite relevant  information.
     "You are going to be in a little article of synchronicities I'm writing," I say.
     He smiles and gives me his card: 'Cliffside Park fire Department, Frank Poerio Chief', it reads.

     The New York Times of January 4, 2003 carried a photograph of my father's hometown Koblenz with the caption: "Yesterday, floodwaters covered part of the monument at Deutsches Eck, the German corner, where the Mosel and Rhine Rivers meet in Koblenz."
     I have an old postcard from Papa, which shows the deutsche Eck, and which I kept, and looked at many times over the years. It's ingrained in my soul. As Seth says,  it's what we focus on that counts. He's so right. Here it is for me to see. In The New York Times of all places, and at a time when my life begins anew, just as the Deutsche Eck, or Koblenz was for Papa so many years ago when his life began there on July 25, 1887.
     January 6, 2003 was the closing of our house, and occurred exactly one day before Haigaz's birthday. He was born on January 7 1904. January 7 was the beginning of his life, and  will mark the beginning of a new life for me, which I presume means a closure for the almost "numb"ing - as far as those numbers are concerned - but also in many ways moving "moving" synchronicities.

Ute's Poetry and Musings