Most people refer to the experiences I’m about to unravel as coincidence or happenstance. That’s because they go beyond logical explanation, and we don’t know what to make of them. Some might go as far as labeling them a form of serendipity or spirituality, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Many years ago while doing research for my master’s degree in history at UWEC, something uncanny caught my eye. I came across a thick book of memoirs by Mabel Dodge Luhan (pronounced LOO-hahn), a wealthy patron of the arts in the 1910s and early 20s who was famous for establishing the most successful “salon” in American history. At the time I remember being fascinated by the movers and shakers such as Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Margaret Sanger, and Jack Reed, etc. who passed through her door at 23 Fifth Ave. To my surprise, we had something in common.

Both of us were born in Buffalo, New York. However, it was her writing that intrigued me because of a particular experience she described.

 In her book, Luhan discloses that she saw her future Native American husband in a dream long before she met him. He eventually became Dodge’s fourth husband, and, yes, she was quite the shaker and mover. You may think she made this up. Or was this a self-fulfilling prophecy? And then again, just maybe could this be true?

Several years later I signed up for a class at the Chippewa Valley Museum on “Studies in American Indian History,” and I met a stranger whose nickname was “Smokey.” Whenever he signed his name he sketched a mountain beside it. We first met through a small discussion group and later during a sensational chili and cornbread lunch.

I was sitting across the table from him when all of a sudden I felt what I can only describe as some kind of force or vibration. It seemed to extend about a foot and a half on each side of my arms. I had never felt this before and haven’t felt it since. However, it gave me such a jolt that I flinched and said, “Something very strange is happening.”

He said, “Like psychic?”

Then I asked, “Why did you say that?”

He told me, “Now, I know where I’ve seen you before; it was in a dream.”

“Yeah,” I said, “tell me another one.”

But Smokey insisted that he had dreamt about me, once in a near-death experience and two other times. The class ran a few sessions, and I was still feeling skeptical about him. During another meeting with Smokey and another acquaintance, I laughingly said, “This man claims he met me in a dream.”

The acquaintance turned out to be Native American and responded, “We often see things in dreams.” Still, I wasn’t convinced these happenings may be valid.

A few years later, I was teaching English to international students in Menomonie. After working there a few months, my supervisor asked if I’d give her a lift home because her car wasn’t working. When I drove past the area where Smokey lived, I said, “Can you believe I’m having dinner with a man who says he dreamed about me?” And I laughed.

“Yes!” she said. She proceeded to tell me that at one time in her life she saw auras around people, and when she was younger, she dreamt about a large rock and the place where her future husband proposed. I remember thinking, “I may drive off the road.”
Last month in the Health Section of the Jan. 14 Leader-Telegram, there was a story that grabbed my attention. The headline was “DREAM gave woman courage to battle breast cancer.” The woman, Anne Abruzzini of Turlock, Cal., said that she had no idea she had breast cancer until she dreamed about it. Subsequently she told her husband, who reached over and felt a lump. When Abruzzini finally decided which doctor would do her surgery (several had been rejected), Dr. Laura Esserman shocked her when she walked into the room. This was the woman who had been in Abruzzini’s dream!

So what do you think? Are these experiences mere coincidences or happenstance? Or is there something more that connects us?