This chapter of the story is amazing to me!  It’s a great “Law of Attraction” story. In case you’re not familiar, the theory and science of it is that you can, in fact, manifest what you want in your life if you can access the feeling of receiving it without having an attachment to it manifesting.

So, yes, I wished that I could go see Lemmy in New York, but I put that wish out to the Universe and then I let it go. Thinking it was impossible, I had made peace with it.

Law of Attraction, fate, or luck, if you will, was at work. I got a call from a friend, asking me to meet her in town. Her name was Kathy Keefe. She was a wild woman I’d known for years. She had a reputation for being manic and out of control, running around the streets of Northampton making scenes. It was unusual for Kathy to call me or make any kind of plan to get together. Our relationship came about randomly when I’d run into her on the street or in the cafe’s. Kathy was independently wealthy, and could be very generous, but also unpredictable, like the time she offered to get milkshakes for all the kids in the park, but then left the ice cream shop impatiently while they were in the midst of making them.

I was intrigued by this request to meet her. I imagined she had an issue with her boyfriend Robbie that she needed to talk about, and I was happy to help if I could, so we agreed to meet in the park while Sylvie and her friends played. Kathy and I sat on the park bench talking for quite a long time but she never mentioned why she wanted to see me. I took it in stride because that was just the way Kathy was. We eventually transferred to Bart’s, the cafe across the street, and Sylvie fell asleep while Kathy and I drank coffee and talked. Matt, a friend of both of us, joined in our uneventful conversation.

Out of the blue, Kathy looked me in the eyes and said “I want to give you some money!”, then she turned to Matt and said “and I’m going to give you some too”. Matt and I looked at each other quizzically, and looked back to Kathy with nothing to say. “Write out your correct names for me”, she said, handing me a slip of paper and pen.  Matt and I didn’t question her request, but did what she asked and she left.

Perplexed, we looked at each other and I asked Matt “How long do you think we should wait for her to come back?” Matt grinned. We both felt the chances of Kathy coming back were slim, but Sylvie had fallen asleep in my arms, so I wasn’t going anywhere right now.

Fifteen minutes later Kathy fairly flew threw the door and handed us each a money order, saying “Cynthia, give $5,000 to John, will you?”

John was a tall good looking black man who wandered around town barefooted most of the year, cleaning the sidewalks and charming the ladies. I had heard that he once worked on Wall Street and had decided to walk away from that life, and now here he was, a fixture in Northampton. Technically, I guess he was homeless, but I knew that wasn’t quite the truth because several women around town found him very attractive and he always had a place with one of them, primarily with Margie, a friend of mine. We were both raising children, and had a “hippie” or at least “alternative” lifestyle to some degree, she much more than myself.

Matt and I looked up at her questioningly and in complete surprise as we took the papers from her hand.  She ran out the door as fast as she had come. We had no time to thank her or question her.  She was gone.

We looked at the checks in our hands. Matts’ check  was for $20,000, and mine was for $40,000. “Can this be real?” we both wondered.

“What should we do? I asked Matt.  Do you think she’ll come back? Should we go to the bank? I don’t even have any identification with me” I mused.

“Okay”, Matt suggested, “let’s go to the bank together and see. I’ll hold Sylvie while you go get your license, and we’ll go to the bank right now”. That sounded like a good plan, so I laid Sylvie gently in his lap, and ran like to wind all the way home to grab my license.

Brian was at the sink washing dishes when I ran into the kitchen, grabbed my wallet, and headed for the door. “What’s going on” he asked, “where’s Sylvie?’.

“She’s asleep with Matt Hershler up at Barts’. Kathy just gave me a check for $40,000, and she gave Matt a check for $20,000.  Matt and I are  going to the bank”.

Brian dropped the bowl in the sink. I kept going, and ran out the door without further explanation, mostly because I wasn’t used to leaving Sylvie like that and I didn’t want her to wake up before I returned.

Sylvie was still blissfully asleep when I got back to Bart’s. I gathered her up and Matt and I walked down to Kathy’s bank, the First National Bank of Northampton on the corner of King and Main Street.

We sat primly, and yet breathless, in front of the bank lady who asked “So what can I do for you today?”

Matt said “a friend of ours just gave us these money orders out of the blue.”  We handed them to her. “Can we open accounts?” She looked at the money orders nonchalantly, and then at us as if to say “Yeah, right” with a besmirched look on her face, and carried on dryly with business of opening up accounts for us and depositing the money.  When she had finished asking us all the questions, filling out all the forms and getting our signatures she handed each of us the paperwork.

“So…can we have some of the money then?” Matt asked excitedly.

“Of course” she said without expression, “how much do you want?”  Matt and I looked at each other and I said “a $1,000 dollars?”

“Me too” Matt chimed in. Matt and I grinned at each other while she processed our withdrawals. Walking out of the bank, money in hand, we now knew it was for real.

This “simple twist of fate” made it possible for me to go see Lemmy again after 20 long years.