A couple of weeks ago the blessings started rolling in. Not unlike the tale of the three wise men, they took the form of people bearing gifts – unbidden but nonetheless welcome.

Adam used to live in the studio behind our house.  He got an important looking piece of mail in our box in early May and I decided to drive it over to him. As I was about to leave his place, he stole into his bedroom and emerged with a totem and a story. He too reconnected with his biological father, who threatened ultimately to cut up Adam into undecipherable pieces and stuff him, tritely enough, into garbage bags all because Adam defended his mother, bio dad’s ex-wife. But I digress…back to the totem.

Adam recently traveled to an exotic island and before departing a friend gave him a little Hina Goddess totem. He placed it on a rock at low tide, brushed some sage and holy water over the thing, watched it wash out to sea and took his two-week trip.  When he returned to surf 3 weeks later, he was forced to move far from his regular spot due to a rattle snake in residence and a crop of naked singing women, strange enough in and of themselves. He went to pee behind a rock and lying at his feet was The Hina Goddess totem, head broken off and sitting next to body.  He bequeathed this goddess of the moon to me: here’s to two unlikely reunions.

The next day our neighbor Anne was selling her primitive kept rattles at a yard sale.  I recounted my upcoming journey to her and she offered me a rattle.  I selected the beautiful piece in the picture.  The handwritten label reads, “One of the oldest and most universal instruments, the rattle is given to newborn infants in many cultures. Shake the rattle and let its sound renew and bless you.”

Saturday Margie and I met my cousin Ellen at a labradoodle kennel up in the hills outside Atascadero.  We had to put down our 16-year-old lab Tucker in March. As a result I had to cancel my first scheduled trip to Phoenix to meet my biological mother Maya. Margie’s allergies disappeared completely within 48 hours of putting down Tuck so we knew the next dog had to be hypoallergenic.

As we drove up to the kennel, the owner Kristen appeared with a brown-skinned toddler.  I said to Margie, “That boy is adopted.”  It turns out that Brandon and Kristen made a conscious decision to raise a family of adopted children, and Micah was their first. Upon hearing that I was about to meet my birth mother, Brandon laid his hands upon me and incanted a spontaneous blessing that brought tears to my little agnostic eyes.  And they offered us guardianship of their precious boy Blaze (pictured above with Margie).

The three blessings had come to pass.