According to Erma Bombeck, Thanksgiving dinner takes 18 hours to prepare. It takes 12 minutes to eat. Half-times are 12 minutes long. Coincidence?

I mention this because of an additional kind of coincidence that occurred in our household this week.

It all started 2 months ago when I came home from Costco with my new “ears“ – not the corny kind I could smother in butter but the type I’ve been anticipating as a royal affliction akin to having ringworm or toenail fungus: hearing aids.

Since then, I have revised my thinking. Everyone should have them. With hearing aids, you can hear what people are saying to you without interjecting “What??” or “Huh??” over and over like a deranged parrot. Or you don’t have to give up and laugh hoping they hadn’t just asked you a question such as “Did you know my dog died yesterday?” And you don’t have to participate in demented conversations such as:

Me: I’ve decided I’m going to get a hearing aid.
You: What kind is it?
Me: It’s about a quarter past three.

Well, I have to say the experience of acquiring the hearing aids was certainly not what I was expecting. Now I can not only actually hear how annoying that squeak on my glider chair is (why didn’t somebody say something?), but once I put those little doodads in my ears in the morning, I forget they’re there! They don’t keep popping out like earbuds do, and when the phone rings, I can tap a little button on one of them and answer the phone – even when it’s buried in my purse or hiding in another room.

As the days went on, I started thinking about how lucky I am to have all this technology augmenting my hearing which has otherwise exceeded its shelf life. And I started actually hearing some of the classical music grandson Bryce has Alexa playing while he’s at his computer. It sometimes includes music by Ludwig von Beethoven, and listening to it – thanks to my good old inbred Irish Catholic guilt – I’d frequently have to think about how cruel the composer’s hard-of-hearing life was compared to mine. Imagine creating that kind of music and not being able to hear it except in his mind. If anybody deserved those hearing aids, it was him.

Because my attention kept drifting to Beethoven so often while getting acquainted with my new digital hearing, I couldn’t believe my eyes – or my ears – when I read an email message this week from daughter Teresa. She had addressed it to me, her brother Matt, and sisters Lisa, Susy, Gretchen, and Judy. It was intended as a Thanksgiving gift. Coincidence?

Here’s the message Teresa sent:

I know flash mobs aren’t for everyone but THIS one is so amazing. When Beethoven composed his last symphony he put human voices at the end singing Ode to Joy. He was fully deaf at the time and had just come out of a depression. It was the first time a great composer added a choir to a symphony. And a famous critic at the time complained about how he ruined a perfectly good symphony with a choir at the end. Ha ha! So much for famous critics. I am thankful for this masterpiece and for someone’s wonderful idea to perform it in a flash mob and put it on YouTube. Happy thanksgiving!
https://youtu.be/a23945btJYw
Teresa

I hope you turned your volume up for that – and that, like me, it gave you some joyful listening to be thankful for. And thank you, Teresa.

According to Albert Einstein, coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous.