Unexpected

U is for Unexpected.

I got a text last night with no name, just the following message: “It’s Thursday. Doing my drive-by. Love your stalker.”

Crap, I thought. Has Joan Jackson resorted to driving by and texting me? I have my posse of good-deed vigilantes taking action when I hear from her and wondered if I needed to contact them.

Helen called the number, though. “I don’t think it’s them,” she said. “Call and listen to the message.”

I did… and recognized the voice. Of a friend.

*****

Yesterday and again today, I woke up to see snow outside. Snow. After 70 degree weather and green grass and crocuses. Unexpected snow. In late April.

*****

The other day I happened to be driving on Rte 20 in New York and saw a sign for the place my daughter-in-law works. Although I was on my way somewhere else, I turned in to see her. Unexpected. It was a delight to see her and the place she works.

*****

At Laity Lodge, on one of my pre-dawn trips to Threshold, I noticed a light, an artificial light, in the castle. I  didn’t want to startle the other visitor so I stuck my head in the entrance and said something like, “I didn’t want to scare you, but I’m up here, too.” Then I went and sat on a chunk of limestone outside and watched the sun rise. I’m quite sure I was unexpected.

*****

On another visit to Threshold, I was surprised by another living thing there.

I was lost in reverie, thinking on who knows what, when a nearby movement startled me. It was a beetle, which, of course, put me in mind of A. A. Milne.

I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day …
And Nanny let my beetle out –
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out –
She went and let my beetle out –
And Beetle ran away.

She said she didn’t mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,
She said that she was sorry, but it’s difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you’ve mistaken for a match….

An unexpected beetle in a matchbox is kind of like an unexpected beetle in a castle.

*****

Heraclitus said, “If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it…”

Oh, Heraclitus, walk with me for a day. I’m surrounded by the unexpected.