Co-incidence

A friend of mine has a birthday that often (including this year) coincides with Mother's Day. As I wrote to wish her happiness for both, I began to think about how many things coincide--Christmas babies, who each year celebrate in the midst of a major holiday, people married on a long holiday weekend, who will forever have to pay holiday fares to go away for their anniversary, parents of kids a certain number of years apart, who will always be dealing with coinciding graduations and admissions processes.
 
For me, the coinciding may have little to do with dates on a calendar, but much more to do with there simply being so many directions to go that things can't help but coincide. Kids' performances coinciding with travel for work. Ceremonies for one child coinciding with exams for another. Ends of certain activities coinciding with beginnings of others. It's enough to overwhelm even the calmest, most multitasking-adept person.
 
As I think about my Mother's Day birthday friend, I wonder if she enjoys being celebrated in two ways or longs for her birthday to be separate. As I feel myself trying to cover all the bases on a day when everything coincides, I wonder if that's even possible, or whether these situations are really designed to remind us that we simply can't cover all of the bases all of the time, and that that's okay.
 
Sometimes, a coincidence is just a coincidence, and sometimes, perhaps, it is more. Either way, all we can really do is to do our best with the choices--the important ones, and the not-so-important ones that happen to coincide. How did we end up in this position? Hard to say. Sometimes, it's just a coincidence.