by Debby Pattiz

Lately, I’ve been thinking about serendipity, those glittering threads that occasionally catch our eye, disrupting patterns we expect to see in the warp and weft of daily life.

Last week, my friend—let’s call her Belle—and I were sitting together on a black vinyl banquette in a corner booth at Sharky’s. Belle lost her mom when she was a teenager. As I dribbled spicy avocado salsa into my overstuffed burrito, a wistful Belle described her mom’s red Cadillac. “After my mom died,” Belle was saying as she twisted her napkin, “I’d always see a red Cadillac whenever something momentous happened to me.” Belle hadn’t seen a red Cadillac in years. “I don’t think they’re out there anymore.” Her downcast eyes surveyed her chips.

I was describing all this to my husband on Saturday as he drove us up the coast. As we hurtled into a long curve, he shrugged. “Hm. There’s one.”

“Oh, right,” I thought. “Like I’m gonna fall for that one after thirty years of marriage.”

But . . . I’m still never quite sure.

So I whipped my head around and lo! A red Cadillac was merging into traffic. The scarlet speck soon fell away behind us; my husband is a big believer in accelerating up hills. Following a spate of pleading and promises we both knew I wouldn’t keep, my husband sanctioned a transitory test of the red Cadillac’s mettle. Slow and steady, it crept up. Close enough for me to snap a photo through the rear window.

Was simply seeing a red Cadillac on a long drive up the California coast serendipity? Or was it serendipity because Belle needed someone to see it for her? “I love it,” Belle texted me after I sent her the photo. “It makes my heart full.”