To Chance

I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. I can’t imagine what that means for the smallest--the dog hops up beside me on the couch, the bananas ripen on the counter--and for the biggest things--the babies who die, the fires that burn down houses with the families sleeping upstairs--things in our lives.

We can make a reason. We can find a reason. But a reason, from a god or gods, a lesson of sorts that without this incident we would never know and then surely our lives would be less complete? I cannot.

Chance horrifies. All this pain and suffering for nothing? And all the joys out of nowhere? I grew up thousands of miles from my husband. We met at Purdue, which I almost didn’t go to were it not for a brief encounter with a professor from my first choice school. He said go to the school that gives you the most money. Indiana it was. 

And my husband admits it was not love at first sight. I understand. I’m not Midwestern and lack the classic Midwestern reserve and stoicism. I can be, to some, abrasive. But somehow, he grew to either ignore it or embrace it. So I might trace all the way back and say some force guided me north and not west. Some higher being softened his view, his heart. It all came together so perfectly, yes? As if we were made for each other. At very least, Fate played a part.

Sometimes the chances are so slim, incalculable even, that surely, something else was in play. Call it what you will, my friend says, anything but chance. We are debating this again, knowing neither of us will change our minds. We’ve done this so many times, by now it is a friendly dance, one we enjoy. We are not alone, she says. Outside of us, there is so much more we can’t know, and yet every day, we can see it working in our lives, she says.

I don’t disagree with her. Behind me, the young man at the counter grinds coffee beans for a customer. The scent punctuates the air. My friend pulls her hair behind her ear. I’m just grateful she is here with me.