In 1988 I made a trip east to bring our son, David, home from New York City after his sophomore year in college. I took our daughter, Laurie, along for company on the long trip, which takes eight hours. Laurie was married and expecting their first child. The night before the trip, I dreamed about Evelyn. Evelyn had been our next door neighbor during all my childhood years. She was like a second mother and still lived in the same house in New Jersey. I don't remember ever dreaming about her before.

As we were traveling through New Jersey the next day, Laurie noticed that we were going to pass close to my old hometown. She suggested that we stop briefly to see some of the spots she had visited as a child when her grandparents were still living there. So we drove through town quickly, and I showed her my old high school and some other spots of interest, including the homes of some of my former girlfriends! Then we drove down the main street to see the church I had attended in my youth.

Laurie asked, "Do you think we should stop to see Evelyn?" I said, "I'd like to, but we could only stay five minutes, and it wouldn't be fair to drop by unannounced for such a short visit." So, reluctantly, we decided not to visit her.

We were already late, but Laurie wanted to see one more place, the spot down by the river where she had fed the ducks when she was a child. So we drove to the river and I turned left to cross the bridge. I planned to make a left turn at the next street and go in by the opposite side of the river where the ducks congregated. But I discovered that the town fathers had changed the street to one-way, the wrong way. So I said to Laurie, "We'll go down to the next street and come back around the block."

As I started to turn left at the second street, I had to wait for two women who were crossing the intersection. As we drove behind them, I asked Laurie, "Who does that look like?" and she said, "It looks like Evelyn." And it was. We jumped out of the car and had a wonderful five-minute reunion right there on the sidewalk, a mile from her home.

We had left New Castle, PA eight hours earlier and driven 400 miles to arrive at that precise spot in New Jersey at that exact moment to see the one individual about whom I had dreamed the night before. We could have missed that meeting for any number of reasons: If we had gone to her house, if the first street had not been one-way, if we had stopped on the road one time more or less, if we had been thirty seconds sooner or later for any reason. Some intelligence had worked out the details perfectly.

Evelyn later told me that she and her companion were an hour and a half late taking their walk that day because of her busy schedule.