I Lost My Phone And Found an Unexpected Connection

When a friend called to see if I wanted to go for a walk, I was glad. It was late spring 2020. Even though it was early days into the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt like I’d been stuck in the house forever.

We drove separately to a beautiful state park and parked ten feet away from each other in the massive parking lot. It was eerily empty, with only a few scattered cars.

It was mid-morning, brilliantly sunny, and cold, with a biting wind. The birds were singing their heads off. I slipped my phone into a pocket of my jacket, wrapped a scarf around my neck, and put on wool cap, gloves and mask.

My equally bundled friend and I walked for a couple hours, enjoying views of lake and woods, strolling six feet apart and side by side when the pine-scented trail allowed, one behind the other when it narrowed. It was peaceful and calming and a balm against the daily worries of the virus and national politics, work and family. We parted company back at the parking lot.

She drove away as I stripped off my outerwear and laid it all on the passenger seat. I was pleasantly warm as I started the car. How many miles had we walked? My phone could tell me. I picked up my jacket and got a shock.

My phone wasn’t there.

I searched under both front seats. In the gap between the front seats. Under the floor mats. In my purse. Hoping against hope. No luck.

It was gone.

Somehow it had fallen out of my pocket. What were the odds I’d find it along the trail, thickly littered with pine needles, broken sticks, and dead leaves, all in motion from the wind? Still, I had to try.

I slowly searched the loop we’d walked, feeling more hopeless with each step. Approaching the trail’s end, I remembered I’d also taken a side trip to the bathroom hut. Despite knowing it was pointless, just to be thorough, you never know, I dragged my feet there.

A slim woman in a ski jacket, knit cap and no mask appeared from the back of the rustic potty shack, black pup pulling hard against a leash. She lifted a hand to wave, and I waved back, distracted. My eyes snapped back to her uplifted hand, holding—a pink rimmed black rectangle! Could it be?

“Excuse me,” she called. “Are you looking for your phone?”

She approached and keeping her distance, handed the phone to me. I stared at it, then back at her, dumbstruck. What were the odds? “Thank you so much!”

She grinned. “No problem!”

“Where did you find it?”

“It was in the grass,” She gestured toward the underbrush by the chain link fence. “I stepped on it.”

“Wow! I can’t believe it.” We both laughed.

“I know, right?” She was charming, with an open, comfortable smile. Then she said, “Aren’t you Dr. Gitlin? Do you remember me? I’m Janelle.”

Janelle! She babysat my son for a summer, oh, twenty years ago.

“Janelle! No wonder you seemed so familiar!”

“How’s Mike? What’s he up to?”

“He’s twenty seven!” We both laughed. “How’s your little boy?”

“He’s in college!”

Walking back to my car, phone clenched in my fist, I reviewed what had happened. What were the odds, really?

I’d considered leaving the phone behind and just driving home. But instead I’d looked for it. The longer I’d searched, the more I wanted to give up. But I didn’t. Tired and discouraged, I came close to not detouring to the bathroom cabin. But I did.

Given the very few people in this very large park, it was improbable that even a stranger would have found the phone. But someone from my past? Incredible. And that we’d actually run into each other right after I’d lost it and she found it? Crazy.

What had made Janelle ask me if I was looking for my phone? Was I the first person she saw after finding it, or just the last?

Reason insisted that all these variables added up to a Random Event, yet it felt Fated. I climbed into the driver’s seat of the car, awed.

I leaned my head against the whiplash guard, lifted the phone up, and looked at it with stunned wonder. I had my phone. It wasn’t lost. I’d never be satisfied with this story if it were fiction. Far too pat. But it actually happened to me.

I pressed the home button and my wallpaper flashed up the cover of my recently published book. The title ran across the top, Practice, Practice, Practice: This Psychiatrist’s Life, the white talk bubbles floated in the center, and my name, Daniela V. Gitlin, MD anchored the bottom.

Janelle must have pressed the home button too; seen and read the cover; recognized my name; seen and recognized me. Aha!—one question answered.

I don’t believe in Michaelangelo’s white bearded Patriarch reaching His finger down from the clouds to touch me in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. And yet. That uncanny sense of being caught in something vast over which I had no control—our planet, the Milky Way, the cosmos—swept through me again.

Isn’t it astonishing when good things happen for no reason? Like, not having to spend big money to replace my phone? Or, encountering Janelle in such a delightful way after twenty years?

I felt thrillingly alive. Happy. What a day!

Despite being a doubting Thomas, just to be thorough, you never know, I closed my eyes and breathed gratitude from my skin, through the car and the park, up into the blue sky and beyond.

Pay attention. Be amazed. Tell about it. Mary Oliver

*A memoir of this therapist ‘s work and other remarkable encounters.* Available on Amazon.

Daniela Gitlin is a rural psychiatrist and author of Practice, Practice, Practice: This Psychiatrist’s Life, a