Fate

Memorabilia from the Cramer Gum Company, owned by my Grandfather

Fate is believing that things are supposed to happen. I grew up watching my dad change jobs. A mechanical engineer, he worked in production. When his father asked him to come to his company, he left the small paper products company where he had worked. But the father-son relationship didn’t succeed, and so he was without a job. Our home was too important to him to move, so my mother sold inherited, antique bedspreads and I washed my hair with soap—which the beautician, noticing, said wasn’t good for my hair. When I picked up thin envelopes dropped through the front door’s mail slot, I knew his resumes hadn’t brought an interview request.

One day George Twombley, the former company’s owner called, and asked my dad to return, which he did taking a big cut in salary. When my mother called upstairs, “Barbara, toss down one of your father’s handkerchiefs,” I pictured my dad on the living room sofa, crying. He had hoped to become president when George retired, but the company was sold to a larger one. That in turn was bought by International Paper, and now, working for the American-owned largest paper and pulp company in the world, my dad traveled to Germany to look at machinery.

Graduated from high school, I had friends going to the state's University of Massachusetts, but I chose the University of Maine, eight hours away. I arrived freshman week and met my roommate who was from a town a short ways away. Soon her boyfriend came by bringing his friend—all from the same town. We met, and Paul and I trailed behind them on the sidewalk. Unknowingly, I had met my future husband and father of our daughters.

My realization is, “If we look at life as picture puzzle pieces not revealing the full picture until finished, each piece of our lives appears as part of a larger plan beyond our knowing.”