Little Synchronicities

This essay was first published in slightly different form on my Substack Pajamas and Pearls in January 2025.

Yesterday I bore witness to a synchronicity while eating carrot cake at a birthday party next to a stranger. The ratio of cinnamon in the cake with the not-too-sweet-but-sweet-enough-ness of the cream cheese frosting wasn’t “the event,” but could have been. If you ever wish to lull a buoyant celebration into a ten-minute steady stream of hushed Oh my gods (introverts take note,) I have the cake for you.

As a happy homebody who doesn’t exactly thrive on party energy, the collective cake moment gave me an opening to break my self-imposed awkward silence as I was leaning against the wall like a total loner. In fact, the delicacy of the cake moved me to excitedly whisper to the wall-introvert parked a comfortable three feet to my right, This is amazing. And somehow, these three words opened a portal in which we started baring our souls; now facing each other, three feet apart, leaning against the wall at the far end of the room.

The portal’s vacuum swept us through a series of stages: cake, work, omg this cake, alternative therapies for mental health issues, wow this frosting, I lost my mom last year and quit my career, oh I have a song that consoles me—its Bach. Full Stop. Having just watched The Staircase scene when Colin Firth’s Michael Peterson plays Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, I leaned in.

She proceeded to explain how a certain version of a certain Bach song (I’m not great at absorbing details around cream cheese frosting) is able to match her sadness, then elevate her from it. We discussed vibrations of sound and light, how these affect our environments and emotional states, and she leaned in ever so slightly saying, “Something strange happened with my song.” Well now this party is everything.

One morning she went into her office early. Sitting alone at her desk, she suddenly heard her song. (One reason to love stories from strangers: you literally never know where they’re going. Is she going to find God? Is it the janitor who’s really an angel? Is she hallucinating?) She followed the sound of her special song to the office of a colleague she didn’t know. “This song brings me so much comfort,” he disclosed, and—equally caught off guard—they slid into their own mini-portal experience, marveling over their shared, significant solace in this random Bach song. What she didn’t know in that moment but later found out, was that his father had just died, and not knowing what to do, he drove into work early, sat at his desk, and played this song. Her song. On the same morning she went in early. The loveliness of their experience flowed over me.

My mind went back to the part of our portal when we discussed alternative mental health treatments, and I actually said the words, “Several months after my mom died I started to feel like I should dance in the moonlight in my nightgown,” and I could sense it was now her turn to wonder whether I was going to disclose some Wendy/Peter Pan fetish, or ecstasy habit. Her anticipation was palpable as she ridiculously replied, “Well, why wouldn’t you?” Conversational genius, this one.

I shared how I moved to a property in a small forest after losing my mom, and—I was sure to add how crazy I thought this was—somehow felt the moon and the trees were coaxing me out under the stars, as if I were a witchy herbalist living in a cave in the fifteenth century. But my point was I had a song. It reminded me so much of my mom, so I played it on repeat and just danced like a little lunatic, swaying behind my house or in the unfinished part of my kitchen, night after night, loosening the grief in my joints, with every repeat of the same song, over and over, moon after moon.

I took her further down the portal. Last year was my first Mother's Day without my mom, and I decided to escape it altogether and to go Europe for a week. I felt drawn to Italy—the shopping in Milan, the calm majesty of Lake Como, the carbohydrates and prosecco. After booking my flight I dug into hotels and quickly realized of all the countries in Europe, Italy actually shares the same date for Mother's Day, so I was going to have to face it head-on. I froze.

A week before my flight, when I was still trying to sort out where to stay and wondering how I would ever afford a room on Lake Como over a holiday weekend, I forced myself out from my avoidance bubble and managed to find one room at one hotel right on the lake. It looked great on the website, but I literally knew nothing about this hotel, and with just days left before the stay, the room was nonrefundable. I felt something gently click into place inside me, like I could trust it would be okay, so I booked the room, choosing to let the click override the anxiety of What If.

I looked up the hotel on Instagram, and opened the first picture that caught my eye: a teak chair under a tree, right on the lake. I felt another gentle click inside, and as my eyes sank into the blues and greens of the dreamy photo, I unmuted the post. The song was my dancing song. My mom song. My sway-the-griefsore-joints-in-the-moonlight song.

The term synchronicity was coined by Carl Jung to represent a coincidence that feels too meaningful to be a random accident. Many psychologists and scientists attribute synchronicities to something called “confirmation bias” (when you only notice information that supports your existing thoughts or beliefs). But in a spiritual or Jungian context, synchronicities are often interpreted as signs or messages. For me personally, while I find the discussion interesting, the arguments don’t really matter. I love feeling loved and supported, and if a “coincidence” makes me feel loved by the Universe, I’ll take it. Will you?

Back at the party we finished our cake, and the portal shifted us to our shared love of porcelain china and silverware as we wore little shoulder dents into the paint on the wall of the far side of the room.