rivka

I forgot to bring my book to work with me today. (An Interior Life, by "Katherine Blake" aka Dorothy Heydt, but I digress.) So while I was eating lunch, I picked a couple of old magazines off the stack the former nutritionist had left on the office shelf.

In the Dec 18-25 2000 issue of Us Weekly (an utterly vapid celebrity gossip magazine I'd never read before), at the back of the magazine there was a five-page "real person" profile on Robin Tovey, a woman I knew in college. I recognized her immediately - there aren't many armless, legless, redheaded women named Robin - but it was such a shock to see someone I know profiled in a national magazine that I had to scan through the article for "proof" - a reference to Reed College. Huh. By itself, an interesting but not amazing coincidence.

Then I picked up the Nov 2001 issue of Real Simple. In the middle of a feature about women getting makeovers before attending a high school or college reunion, another familiar name and face: Macy Matarazzo, preparing for her 10th year reunion at Cornell College in Iowa. I knew her in graduate school, slightly - she was the friend of friends.

What are the odds of two successive national magazines, picked at random, featuring non-famous women I know personally? Is it a message of deep cosmic significance? Or just a random lift to an otherwise dreary day?

Either way, I'm charmed.