open book open heart

Isn’t there a word for that thing that happens when you have something on your mind and it begins to seem like life is trying to tell you something because everywhere you go, everywhere you look, there are reminders?  Like, a million years ago when I was trying to get pregnant, everyone was pregnant.  Every billboard was about a labor and delivery hospital.  Postcards in the mail said things like, “Expecting?”

You know what I mean.  That thing?  It really isn’t that those reminders are different than they have always been, it’s just that you’re noticing it because of your life circumstances.  What is the word/phrase for that?  Hold please while I google it.  I am just going to copy and paste my whole first paragraph into the search engine.  That should work right?

Here it is!  It’s called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.  Read more here.  Cool!

“The phenomenon bears some similarity to synchronicity, which is the experience of having a highly meaningful coincidence… such as having someone telephone you while you are thinking about them. Both phenomena invoke a feeling of mild surprise, and cause one to ponder the odds of such an intersection. Both smack of destiny, as though the events were supposed to occur in just that arrangement… as though we’re witnessing yet another domino tip over in a chain of dominoes beyond our reckoning.”

That is exactly it!  A chain of dominoes beyond my reckoning.

This is all prelude to tell you I randomly selected a book in a used bookstore by Maeve Binchey called Scarlet Feather and to my surprise, it had two very interesting sub-plot lines about foster care.  Weird no? No?  Well, I thought it was.  I’ve read things like One for the Murphys and The Language of Flowers but I sought them out, knowing they were about foster care.  

The Maeve Binchy book took me by complete surprise.  And, kudos to Maeve, it wasn’t just a plot line because she needed her kid characters to be heroes sans responsible parents – that’s a theme I see (and hate) all the time.  Binchy did a great job weaving in the two entirely plausible foster care stories into her bigger plot.  I did not love the main characters of the book but boy-oh, I loved those two plot lines.

I read Binchy a long time ago (long before the million years ago when I was trying to get pregnant).  I remember liking but dismissing her at the same time.  Those two plot lines have convinced me to give her another chance.  I have a feeling her books will be the Irish equivalent of comfort food.  Stop me if I am wrong.  Really.  Stop me.  I’m going to the library – right now.