{"id":22454,"date":"2025-06-11T00:14:56","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T06:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=22454"},"modified":"2025-06-09T15:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T21:16:09","slug":"coincidences-and-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/11\/coincidences-and-surprises\/","title":{"rendered":"Coincidences and Surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY JOELLEN COLLINS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
JoEllen Collins\u2014a longtime resident of the Wood River Valley, now residing in San Francisco\u2014 is an Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist, a teacher, novelist, fabric artist, choir member and proud grandma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a child, I was often amazed by what we called \u201cco-inky-dinks.\u201d Recently, I experienced some of these surprises in Oklahoma City, where my birth mother\u2019s family resides. Most of my friends and readers know about my \u201cnew\u201d families, a source of my gratitude.\u00a0I first spent two days with my now familiar and loving family, especially with my half-brother from that family\u2014the one I found originally through genealogical sites. Thus, I have been able to know some other wonderful people from the prairielands I would have inhabited barring adoption.
\nLast year I was invited to a reunion of my birth father\u2019s family, the Fraziers, and enjoyed time with the other half of my birth history. My biological father was one of 12 children on a farm in Follett, a little Texas town, during the Depression and the disastrous Dust Bowl, which made farming even more risky. Follett is not far from the Oklahoma Panhandle, and the offspring of my father\u2019s family have mostly settled in surrounding prairie states. Now I could meet once again with both biological families, something I did not experience before the past couple of years. I\u2019ve always considered myself \u201cJoEllen Gifford,\u201d who was born of the Giffords (my mother was Helena Valborg Johanson from a Swedish family). I have spoken before of my luck in having a wonderful family raise me. I couldn\u2019t picture myself with anybody else. Now I have found a family of \u201chalf-blood\u201d members and can experience relationships with them as well as with my adoptive kin. I am very lucky to be part these three families.
\nEven as elderly, I have continued to learn that we mustn\u2019t dwell in negative expectations. For example, the first day I joined the Frazier reunion, I met Mark, who lives in Modesto, California, not too far from my current city, Walnut Creek. He attended school in nearby Ceres, where my Johanson cousin Lynn was a music teacher. Turns out she taught him how to play the guitar. They talked on the phone after I met him. Later, I learned that Mark and his lovely wife are going to be able to visit me. What a welcome connection!
\nThen, while relaxing with my biological mother\u2019s family, I read a four-page, legal-sized, handwritten document that my birth mother wrote about her childhood in Texas, a vivid description of a prairie child during the Depression. I could see she was a decent writer from her delicious details. It was fabulous; I understand a little bit more about this woman I never met. I have a better sense of her and a hint about why I am so drawn to writing stories.
\nI now live in a place that is very nourishing, as was the Idaho I treasured. I\u2019m with wonderful \u2019new\u201d friends, and there have been some surprising coincidences that support my Pollyanna nickname. This and other recent surprises nourish my belief that a positive outlook bolsters a healthier reaction to future happenstances, even, perhaps, sad ones. More next column!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY JOELLEN COLLINS As a child, I was often amazed by what we called \u201cco-inky-dinks.\u201d Recently, I experienced some of these surprises in Oklahoma City, where my birth mother\u2019s family resides. Most of my friends and readers know about my \u201cnew\u201d families, a source of my gratitude.\u00a0I first spent two days with my now familiar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-on-lifes-terms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22455,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22454\/revisions\/22455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}