Connecting The Dots With Cheryl

This column originally appeared on Sunday, May 17, 2009

My friend Cheryl has this theory about the universe.

Cheryl, who close friends refer to as The Wise Woman of West Vincent, frankly, has a lot of theories about a lot of things, including, for example, but not limited to, the restorative benefits of black and white commercial television circa 1967, and I am glad she does. Generally having her around relieves me of having to develop my own theories about the universe.

My feelings about Cheryl’s theories are similar to a relationship I heard that developed between the writer Calvin Trillin and his beloved late wife, Alice. In their marriage, she took responsibility for keeping on top of certain world current events, such as the war in the Middle East or monsoons in Bangaladesh, allowing him the freedom to concentrate more on finding a very good bagel shop in East Lansing, Mich. With Cheryl, she’s got the spiritual nature of the universe covered while I’m free to focus my attention on getting a nice cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream at Penn’s Table.

Cheryl’s theory about the universe goes something like this: If you have question about something, you just pose it in your mind, wait awhile, and the answer will eventually come to you out of nowhere. The universe will deliver it, free of charge.

If you wonder, for instance, how Indian children can eat the sort of spicy food that you can’t get your 8-year-old to swallow at gunpoint, at some juncture you are going to turn on the radio and some author from Mombai will be telling an NPR host how she used to train herself to eat cayenne pepper curry when she was 4 so she’d be ready for the “adult food.”

Her husband, Jamie, refers to this theory as “interconnectedness,” and has developed his own corollary that sort of goes like this: if something cross your mind for no particular reason, someone else is going to mention the same thing to you without you asking. You’re going to remember a night you spent in a fire house in Asa, Oklahoma, and two minutes later the phone is going to ring and the sports editor of the Daily Oklahoman is going to be on the other end.

Now, the truth be told, I don’t hold with a lot of this “curve of binding energy” mumbo-jumbo stuff. I’m not a New Age, crystals and pyramids sort of guy. I’m actually an Old Age guy, who more or less believes that many of the answers to the world’s mysteries can be solved by ordering another cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream at Penn’s Table. But occasionally, I give in.

Case in point: I recently drove up Bell Tavern Road in East Caln on my way to Cheryl and her husband’s house for dinner, and passed by a unique street lamp along the side of the road. It reminded me of the gas lamps that lighted the street on which I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Quietly, I wondered if those lamps still existed, or had been replaced by some electric arc-light monstrosity such as the ones that illuminate my bedroom at night, free of charge, from the roof of the Chester County Justice Center Parking Garage. (Thanks, commissioners!)

Two days later, I opened a package that arrived from my aunt containing a book of photographs of Cincinnati, Ohio, that she had found at a library book sale in Lawrenceville, N.J., and thought to send to me. Leafing through its pages, I turned to a photo of one of those aforementioned gas lamps, framed in snow, with accompanying text that spelled out how residents of the neighborhood had fought for years to keep the lamps trimmed and burning in the face of increasing costs. And the more I looked at the photo, the more I recognized the scene –the very street that I grew up on.

An I sat on the edge of my bed and thought about those nights when I would sit in an old broken down Volkswagen Microbus my next-door neighbor’s father owned but didn’t drive, dreaming about the day that I would be old enough to drive a stick-shift car, my revelry illuminated by the glow from those gas lamps. And I wondered what had become of my neighbor, who had played in the street with my sisters as I sat in that bus, on those warm Cincinnati nights as the sun went down and the gas lamps lighted up.

And the next day I turned on the television and watched the movie star Sarah Jessica Parker describe her new “Lovely” perfume. And I thought, “Oh, so that’s what happened to her.”