Proximity

Do you know how sometimes in your mind things, events, people do a kind of pile-up? They’re completely separate, in a way, but they have a habit of congealing in clumps and then you just have to say, “Huh, that must be my particular pile-up. No one else would see it this way.”

And this, my friends, must be partly what makes each one of us so special.

One of these mental mash-ups happened to me a few days ago, when the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday fell on the same day as my son’s birthday. It was itself a small coincidence, but then it led to a discovery of other coincidences, both past and present.

The tale starts with photographs. A couple of weeks ago, prompted by the fact that our daughter was canvassing potential voters in advance of the special run-off election in Georgia, I scrolled back in my saved pictures to recall how many summers ago it was that my husband and I got to tour the MLK Jr. National Historical Park https://www.nps.gov/malu/index.htm in Atlanta. Like everyone else, I’d learned from the news that one of the candidates — Rev. Raphael Warnock — had served at the Ebenezer Baptist Church there, and a little ZING went off in my brain as I recalled that we had actually visited this very place, on the 11th of August in 2015, when it was cooler inside than out.

Back then, of course, none of us knew that Rev. Warnock would, in January of 2021, be sworn in as the very first Black senator from Georgia; and that he and the other newly elected Democrat, Mr. Osoff, would together bring the Senate to a 50-50 tie between the two political parties. No, back then, we visited the church primarily because it had been where Dr. (and Rev.) King had been a co-pastor between 1960 and 1968, when he was assassinated. His own father also had been pastor there, and his birthplace is right nearby. Suffice it to say that you can really soak in the spirit of the great leader (and there are also significant tributes to Mahatma Gandhi, who was a tremendous influence) by spending a few hours strolling these few blocks.

Here are a few other photos from that memorable visit:

Now for the layered coincidence part.

I’ve already said that my son and Dr. King almost share a birthday — King’s actual birthday was Jan. 15th; Henry’s is the 18th. Don’t worry, I’m not about to say how alike they are, or anything– just that there’s proximity in these two days. Here’s Henry, face all a-glow, when he turned 16, about seven months before our trip to Atlanta. Hey, that cake (I don’t remember it) looks quite delicious.

The next layer, not of the cake but of the coincidence, formed in my mind when I scrolled back through those photographs and discovered that on August 10th, the day just preceding our wandering around the National Historical Park, I had snapped this picture in our driveway.

Why was this kid once again — on the whole other end of the year from the birthdays — in proximity, at least in my saved pictures, to the great civil rights leader? Neither he nor I can quite recall if he had just the day before gotten his license (age 16 was a clue) or if he and his sister had together taken a quick trip home during a summer spent working up on a Vermont farm. That part is hazy in our minds…and it doesn’t really matter, anyway.

Finding this dappled-sunlight picture, then trying to remember details of that particular August week five and a half years ago, and then adding on top of it the fact that Rev. Warnock, whom we weren’t really considering then, is just starting out his term in the Senate….well, it makes for a quite a particular little bundle of people and places and events in my mind.

Arriving at the end of this perhaps peculiar but completely true explanation, I ask: Do you have any recent pile-ups that might be worth portraying? Packages of things tied up with your own personal string? I bet I’m not the only one around here who does this.

It’s the day after Inauguration Day– go ahead, be brave, leave a comment!