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For a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” use the PayPal link on my home page or mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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A Date With Coincidence And Fate

Sometimes one has to wonder: Coincidence? Or fate?

The date of Jan. 26, more than any other single day in the year, in my family seems to hold a story typed by the fingers of a higher power. Coincidence seems overmatched in explaining it.

Coincidence – “the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection” – is my sharing a birth date with my wife’s grandfather. The odds are only 1-in-365 against this accidental connection.

Coincidence, too, is my daughter giving birth to our first grandchild on the one-year anniversary of the night – seemingly, in fact, the very hour – that the Thomas Fire razed my childhood home. For my father especially, who still lived in the house, a date of gloom was instead turned into one of bloom in celebrating the birth of his great-granddaughter Maya.

Multiple memorable events and coincidental anniversaries happen every date of the year, of course, which is why newspapers run daily “On This Date In History” summaries. A Jan. 26 coincidence, for example, is Michigan becoming a state (1837), Louisiana seceding from the Union (1861) and Virginia rejoining the Union (1970).

January 26 has seemingly surpassed coincidence for my loved ones and me.

Shuffling chronological order, let me begin with “On This Date” in 2003 when a drunk driver speeding down a city street at 70 mph rear-ended me as I was stopped at a red light. My life, in a blink’s instant, was forever changed. I suffered a ruptured disc in my neck and, despite successful fusion surgery, have permanent nerve damage in my left arm, hand and fingers.

Still, it was not fully a tragedy. In truth, I was beyond lucky in walking away from a hunk of twisted steel that had seconds earlier been a Honda Civic. Indeed, two police officers at the scene could not believe I survived.

January 26, 2015 offered no such compassion for my daughter’s dear friend Celine. In India for a wedding, Celine and her younger brother were passengers in a taxi when it was broadsided by a bus. The brother walked away, the big sister did not. In a blink’s instant, a life at age 26 was extinguished; a lifelong friend was lost before intertwined long lives were lived.

Coincidence, surely, these two crashes occurring on the same date. But there is more. Jumping back in time to the Jan. 26 five years before my car crash, my lovely niece Arianna was born.

And this: on Jan. 26 five years ago, exactly one year before Celine’s tragic death, my daughter met the love of her life who would become her husband.

One more coincidental star came into magical alignment this young year. In college, my daughter and Celine had a third inseparable roommate and “sister”, Holly. Last Saturday – Jan. 26 – Holly’s boyfriend proposed to her.

Holly’s fiancé – she enthusiastically said “yes!” when he got down on bended knee – claims he did not choose the significant date on purpose. He says he was not hoping to magically metamorphose an anniversary date of sorrow into one with a measure of joy. In fact, his proposal was delayed a week due to a Midwestern blizzard.

Still, it is naturally possible that Justin’s subconscious was at play when he settled on the fateful date. Or perhaps Jan. 26 somehow chose him.

I cannot help but think the latter. As Hemingway wrote in the closing line of dialogue in the novel “The Sun Also Rises”, spoken in – coincidentally, Celine – a taxi:

“ ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’ ”

Yes, it is.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com