Coffee Serendipitee

Let me tell you a story as I type and sip on my coffee this rainy morning.

My dad was fully Swedish. I grew up with most of the traditions of a Swedish-American childhood. As I grew up, my parents, aunts, and uncles drank a lot of coffee. My mom and her friends at the Swedish Covenant church I grew up in fixed huge pots of egg coffee for every church function. 

I can still remember the aroma of coffee wafting up from the church basement as I descended. It smelled wonderful.

I've always loved the smell of coffee. Imagine my surprise the first time I realized it tasted nothing like it smelled! I figured as I got older, coffee would taste better. Every adult I knew seemed to love it. As I reached my teen years and sipped it here and there to see if my "adult" taste buds had grown in, I realized how different I was from everyone else. 

I got married, had children, ordered Cokes and remarked, "That's my caffeine! Ha ha!" when a friend wanted to meet for coffee. I couldn't stand the taste of coffee! My teaching colleagues would walk the halls early each morning with steaming mugs of coffee. I stocked my classroom fridge with cold, diet Dr Pepper. At family dinners, my aunts would wonder if I was really family. Jokingly, they'd ask me, "How can you be in this family and not drink coffee?" I had no answer for them.

I learned to keep instant coffee in my cabinet, so my Swedish dad wouldn't need to leave the house early in the morning to find a cup of coffee each time he visited.

My sister, Laurie, owned a coffee shop for several years. When I'd visit, she'd always say, "Order anything you want!" My eyes would scan the long menu until I'd find the non-coffee drinks. Her smoothies were great, but I always felt somewhat like a failure. Maybe I wasn't Swedish at all...

And then it happened. I was in contact with cousins in Sweden! My sister, Kris, and I began planning a trip to Sweden, my retirement trip, and I was so excited to meet Gunnel and her family! 

One day, I talked with a friend who had traveled to Sweden several times. She listed things I could expect when visiting a Swedish home, and at the top of that list was something she considered wonderful.

"You can expect to be offered coffee at any home you visit." 

"Oh. Well, what if you don't like coffee?"

She just stared at me. "Well, I guess you could ask for a glass of water..., The water is very good there." 

I went shopping and dragged home a variety of coffees, creamers, syrups, and whatever else I could find. I needed to learn how to drink coffee, fast! I sipped sample coffee at coffee shops in tiny paper cups. I watched what my friends put in their coffee. I tried a tablespoon of coffee in a cup of milk! Nothing worked! All I could taste was bitterness! If I couldn't make it through a second sip of coffee, how would I survive two weeks in Sweden?

My only strategy left was to keep trying every chance I got. I have to admit, I also asked God to heal my taste buds!

The day finally arrived for our trip, and I, yet again, ordered coffee, this time good Swedish coffee, on the Swedish plane headed for Stockholm. I complained to Kris about it. As I talked, I added cream and sugar to the cup the stewardess had handed me.

"Kris, watch this." I raised the cup to my lips and took a tiny sip.

Kris just stared at me, then said, "You can't make that face when we're with our Swedish cousins!" 

"I know!" I was completely dismayed. "There's something wrong with me!"

My first cup of coffee in Gothenburg!

By the time we got to Gothenburg, it was lunchtime. We found a little cafe in the train station and decided to eat there. I ordered lunch and coffee, then sat down and doctored the dark liquid with milk and sugar. The salad tasted wonderful! I looked at the pretty white cup filled to the brim with "the enemy." Reassuring myself that I had a bottle of water as a back-up, I lifted the cup and took a sip. 

What was this wonderful liquid?!? I took another sip. No bitter, screwed-up frown as I swallowed. I was almost as excited to be drinking coffee as I was to be in Sweden!

I ordered coffee every chance I got for the rest of the day! In Sweden, you may find yourself with an opportunity for coffee five or six times a day! They even have a special name for coffee breaks. They call it fika, and I fika-ed several times a day that first week!

I joked that I really must have been broken and all I had needed was to "return to my ‘homeland’ to be reset!"

My Swedish cousins at Fika in Gunnel's home.

Needless to say, lots of coffee and a little jet lag might have caused some sleep problems that week. (They do drink their coffee strong in Sweden!) But it was all worth it! 

The next week, I enjoyed many cups of coffee with my Swedish cousins and never had to ask for a glass of water instead!

On the flight home, I worried that Swedish coffee was different than the coffee at home, and I'd go back to hating it. I’m happy to say that worry was unfounded. The day I got home, I tossed the pop and added a cup of coffee to my morning routine.

Think what you want, but I believe God might have smiled at my silly prayer and decided to answer it. What better time than with my first cup of coffee in Sweden? He is the Giver of Good Gifts, and as odd as that sounds in relation to coffee, maybe He decided to answer my prayer. I really have no other explanation for this marvelous little event. 

Dunedin Coindidence

 

Last Saturday, I sat on the bleachers in a small gym near my home in Kansas and watched my granddaughter playing volleyball.

A woman about my age walked up the steps and sat down with a group on the other side of the aisle. I noticed the back of her T-shirt when she turned to sit. It had a logo of a palm tree and a bagpiper. Above the logo was a name: Dunedin. Under the logo, it read: Highland Games and Festival. I remember wondering how to pronounce Dunedin and whether the name was Scottish because I had just been to Scotland.

I soon forgot about it when my daughters sat down with me. I never mentioned it to anyone, and I didn’t see the woman again.

Later that day, I saw a Facebook post with a picture of a town and a steep road. The caption above the picture read: 

World’s steepest street Dunedin, New Zealand who’s been here?

There was that name I couldn’t pronounce again. That made me curious because it seemed like a huge coincidence to see it twice in a day.

Like I often do when I’m curious about something, I opened DuckDuckGo and typed in Dunedin, and the New Zealand town appeared in the results. Then I added Highland Games and Festival to the search, and a town in Florida popped up that matched the logo on the woman’s shirt. Nothing from Scotland.

I specifically asked for Dunedin in Scotland, but nothing showed up.

Then, I asked for the pronunciation since I’d never heard or read the name before and got this:
/duh-NEE-dn/.

Finally, I searched for the name's origin and found it is the old Gaelic name of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the search engine gave me this: Dunedin means "Edinburgh" in Scottish Gaelic, deriving from "Dùn Èideann," which reflects the city's Scottish heritage. Dùn is the Gaelic word for fort or castle, and Èideann is a centuries-old name for the area where Edinburgh is located.

The last coincidental detail in this sequence is that I had just come home from visiting Edinburgh two months earlier and didn't know Dunedin is an old name for Edinburgh!

Has anything like this ever happened to you? What would you call this coincidental experience? Does it have a name? ChatGPT calls it an illusion, but I’m not so sure.

Teenagers and the Kansas State Fair!

 

 (The names have been changed to protect the dramatic, er…innocent.)

  It was September 2006. Edith, Bunny, Mac, his best friend, Joe, and I spent most of the day at the State Fair. We, girls, spent the afternoon at the exhibits while the boys rode rides, ate fair food, and rode more rides. My oldest daughter, Edith, and I had tickets to the live radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor in the grandstand that afternoon. I had been looking forward to the show for months. Bunny teamed up with Mac and Joe when it was time for Edith and me to line up to go in, and the plan was for Bunny, Mac, and Joe to enjoy the fair together until our show was over. 

 Afterward, we would head back to Wichita, so Bunny could meet her best friends for a birthday movie at 9:15. Everything seemed to be working out great, right? Wrong!

  Edith and I waited in line and finally wound our way to our seats in the nearly sold-out stadium. Since I waited so late to get the tickets (that week), our seats were not the best, think shoulder to shoulder, but we were going to have fun anyway.

  About 40 min. into the 2-hour show, I noticed my phone was vibrating. I was a single mother and had provided my children instant access to me through their personal cell phones, so I decided I had better check. So, I handed Edith my large coke, put my bag under my seat, and dug into my jean pocket; not an easy task with people jammed in all around me! 

 As the first skit (a funny rhubarb pie commercial) began, I opened my phone. Sure enough, I had text messages waiting for me.

  There were three that I had apparently missed while in line. 

 

(I hope you can read teenage texting) ;-)

  Mac's text: 4:28pm - Call me

 Bunny's text: 4:31pm - Hey please call me we cant get a hold of u

 Bunny's text: 5:12pm - Hey please call me we cant get a hold of u

  

Then the messages started rolling in:

  Bunny's text: 5:21pm - Can u please come through the refreshment stand that's where we r

 Bunny's text: 5:25pm - Please its important and we cant get a hold of u my head hurts so bad

 Mac's text: 5:26pm - I am dying from the heat, call me because I just got robbed. I also have a headache and we all want to go home now.

 Bunny's text: 5:27pm - We r right by the ice cream shop

  OK, these kinds of messages tend to make a mother a little anxious. So I sat there trying to decide on my response. 

 

 Possible choices ranged from: 

"Should I call the police or an ambulance?"

to,

"No, and leave me alone, these tickets cost me $35, and I want to enjoy the show." 

 

  Edith insisted on checking on them so I could "stay and enjoy" the show. She squeezed through the row, wisps of smoke coming from her ears.

 I waited patiently, "enjoying the show"; I can't remember a thing from that segment!

 

 Then, the following texts came in.

 Mac's text: 5:35pm - Vending machine took my money.

 Edith's text: 5:36pm - They got robbed by the vending machine and Bunny's friends are going to meet at 7:15 instead of 9:15.

 

  Then, finally:

 Edith's text: 5:37pm - They are hot and being stupid

 

 Edith returned to the grandstand after "robbing" Mac of $20 of the money I gave them for the day. On her way, she stopped at a table to the side of the stage, bought me a Prairie Home Companion t-shirt, and handed it to me as she sat down. After that, we finally enjoyed the rest of the show. 

 We left a couple minutes before the show's end to meet the kids, who (surprisingly!) had spent the rest of the time riding rides and having fun!

 We left the midway, with Bunny rushing us to the exit as she talked to her friends on her cell. Just as we got outside the gate, she pocketed her phone and turned to me. Her friends had changed their minds again and decided to go to the 9:15 movie, after all. Bunny turned to me, smiling innocently, "Do you want to stay a little longer, Mom?"

 Well, I thought… We saw the animals, cakes, pies, quilts, the 619.5 lb. pumpkin, and the butter sculpture. We rode the rides, ate pronto pups, and drank lemonade, plus I got to watch "A Prairie Home Companion" live.

  No… I think we'll just head home.

  I love my kids!

 

A Special Meeting Over a Calendar

This is the calendar that hangs in my kitchen. The wall has had this particular series of calendars hanging on it for many years. They are my favorite because of the artistic rendition of places and culture in Sweden created by Erkers Marie Persson.

In June 2015, my sister, Kris, and I finally were able to cross "Visit Sweden" off our lists with a wonderful trip which included meeting cousins we didn't know we had two years earlier.

Meeting Swedish cousins was wonderful all in itself but a special *S* appeared while we were telling them of our plans for the next week of our trip. We told them we planned on a few days in Mora, Dalarna and hoped to experience some of the traditional cultural aspects of their country. Marianne and her husband, Bobo, told us they had a summer home near Mora and were actually planning to be there the next two weeks! They asked if they could show us around.

Really? Out of all the places we could have visited in Sweden or that they could have a home and they are the same place? *S* for sure!

A few days later, we were on our way North from Stockholm to meet Marianne and Bobo in Leksand, Dalarna. When we arrived, Marianne had the program already planned for our us! We were off!

Bobo grew up in Mora, so he and Marianne knew exactly where and when to take us around the area! We visited the church and grounds in Leksand, then got back in our cars and headed North. Our first stop was the village of Tällberg on the shores of Lake Siljan. We stopped at a group of small red buildings and left our cars to explore it. Some of the buildings were set up to show how life was lived many years ago. (In Wichita, we have Cow Town, with buildings set to look like life 150 years ago. People can walk through them to experience the past.)

Across the square was a small, two story building that had the work of a folk artist displayed. I started up the stairs with Marianne. She stopped me about half way and pointed at a calendar on the wall. She said, "This is the calendar I have in my house." I was surprised and told her it also hung in my house. How fun!

We reached the second floor and I was immediately drawn to a display of figurines that caught my attention. They were of St. Lucia. They seemed so familiar and I had soon chosen two to take back to the U.S. with me. Marianne and Bobo had been in a conversation with the woman at a desk in the corner. They were speaking Swedish so I was only able to understand bits of their conversation.
When I walked over to them, they switched to English and I listened as the woman told them of her busy day with a new shipment.

I saw the same calendar on her desk that had hung in the stairway. I pointed to it and said, "I have this calendar hanging in my kitchen in Kansas!" She looked surprised but said, "No, you don't have this calendar." Then I saw that it was a 2016 calendar. All of a sudden, I understood the conversation I had been listening to! The 2016 calendars had just arrived and she was getting ready to mail them out to stores and customers around the world! This woman was the artist!

*S* Marianne and Bobo had just so happened to take us to a tiny shop in a little village in Sweden which just happened to be the shop of the artist of the calendar I love to hang in my kitchen in America! I hadn't told them about my calendars and they had no way of knowing.
I told the woman that I always order her calendars and had one hanging in my Kansas kitchen back at home. I was so excited and I think she was excited to have me tell her just that!

Needless to say, I have a signed calendar hanging in my home for 2016 and when I look at it, I feel loved by God.

That's the purpose of *S*erendipity.