Me Too

I met my twin last night. She's a 54-year-old Jamaican woman with a thick, thick accent. She came into school last night to have her hair done and I happened to be her stylist. Was it fate? Eh, maybe. A coincidence? Quite possibly. Utter insanity? Yes, yes, ten-thousand times, yes. Yes, I realize I don't remotely resemble that of a 54-year-old Jamaican woman. But after talking to her for the three hours it took to color, wash, blow dry, and style her hair, we found that we have enough in common for it to be a little unbelievable.

Our conversation began like those of every stranger that sits in my chair. Is it still cold/raining/sunny outside? Did you just get off work? What do you do for a living? Normally, at that point something comes up to spark a conversation that hopefully lasts throughout the hair process. There's nothing like the awkwardness of not knowing what to say to someone with a head full of foils that have to process for another 30 minutes.

I asked her about her job and her response was polite but short. She works part-time as a teaching assistant. The conversation went on like this for a few minutes. Then something struck a chord and her guard lifted. Her family of two brothers still lives in Jamaica where she grew up. After working for two years as a flight attendant in her twenties she decided to move to the states to go to college and work in elementary education. This part of the conversation was all well and good. Fairly normal. Then she mentioned her mom.

Her mother passed over in November.

I responded with a generic, "I'm so sorry for your loss" response. At this point there isn't much else I can say without losing my composure.

She then went on to tell me about the difficulties she has experienced after such a loss. She had to drastically cut back her work schedule in order to maintain her sanity. Working with young children while grieving the loss of her loved one was simply too much.

The similarities between our stories were so remarkable that I broke down and told her about my mom. How she passed in November and how the situation affected my career status. I told her about my writing and how I use it as a venue to express my feelings about my loss and other things going on in my life.

She too is a writer, a poet. She recited one of her poems about her experience with loss that was published in several local publications. In the poem, palm trees from her home in Jamaica represented her spirit; while a palm tree stands tall and strong on a warm, sunny day, it will bend and break under the stress of something as destructive as the Mother Nature.

I too am being published. It's something I have shared with a select few people because I don't want to jinx it but I chose to share this news with the stranger in my chair. When I told her the authors name her eyes got wide.

Her brother had, just last week, mailed her one of said author's books.

Now, at this point in my life, the idea of fate is a blurry subject for me but our meeting was the closest thing to fate I've experienced. And while hair dye continued to stain her ever greying roots she excitedly proclaimed that our meeting was nothing short of destiny. It was meant to be. No matter how much I'd like to believe that we are more than a big ball of chaos and pollution plummeting through space until our inevitable doom, my faith in destiny/fate has dwindled to confusion. And this meeting did nothing more than increase my confusion.

Who's to say that she and I were destined to meet on that Tuesday night to talk for three hours about our similar life experiences or our shared passion for jewelry making, photography, and Project Runway? If anything, it could have been nothing more than a chance meeting of two genetically polar people on a similar life path.

At the end of the night, after she was properly primped, she left me with a hug and a scrap of paper containing her contact information. It is now up to me. Do I contact her? Was this meeting fate or simply that of two grieving souls desperately seeking solace from someone who can understand?