Veins

A close friend of my neighbor -- a Mississippian by birth, New Yorker by longest residence, now Tennesseean -- lives only a block from the New Orleans school where I taught for almost two decades and has just published an article about the garden of a country house oustide Nashville.  The wife of the house-owning couple went to summer camp with me.

My neighbor's husband -- a Tennessean by birth, New Yorker by longest residence, and now Tennesseean -- is a book editor, who has been in conversation with a famous photographer about her plans for a memoir about, among other things, her family.  She is my cousin.

Live in the south long enough as my family has -- one side beginning in the mid 17th-century and the other in the early 19th century -- and chances are connections like these are waiting to be seen, like chard veins glowing in morning sun.

Almost magic, like photosynthesis.