About a year and a half ago, I went on the South Beach diet. It wasn't too difficult, and I soon lost a noticeable amount of weight. Since then I've been eating in a South Beach-like manner to keep my girlish figure. But when I go to a restaurant, my choices are often limited because many of the offerings are not South Beach-friendly.

Both my husband and I work at home, and we often go out for lunch to unwind with a book and a snack before the afternoon's pursuits. We live in a redwood canyon only a few long blocks from the small historic center of our town, and we usually walk to one of its many good cafes.

His favorite place for lunch is the local Italian bakery/coffee house, where they have excellent food and drink, and the cushiest seats in town. Sometimes we bring our laptops if we're engaged in writing or website projects. As I learned from Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down The Bones, the noise and bustle of a public place distracts the part of our minds that otherwise would be judging and berating us about our lack of talent and skills, and how we'll never get anywhere. (Where is there to get, anyway?)

But lunches at the cafe have gotten awkward since I've been eating South Beach-style. Although their pastries and sandwich breads are excellent, they're mostly white bread, which is a South Beach no-no. So I often bring a small container of acceptable food from home, and buy tea or coffee to linger over while I read or write until I'm ready to hit the keyboard once more.

My husband is a bit embarrassed by this eccentric behavior, and teases me about getting caught and thrown out for bringing my own food. Although I think he feels more guilty about my behavior than I do, if I'm in the wrong mood his needling makes me self-conscious. One way I try to avoid calling too much attention to myself is to bring my own fork as well as food so I don't have to ask the baristas for a utensil.

A year or so ago, after lunching at the cafe I came home to discover that I'd left my fork behind. This threw me into a moral dilemma. My first thought was to phone and inquire if anyone had noticed my fork and if so, could they set it aside for me? But that seemed too embarrassing, and much too much to ask. It's a popular crowded place, and the employees have no time to search through who-knows-how-much silverware for a lone fork that doesn't match. So I decided I'd just have to let it go and live with only seven forks.

Now and then, I'd regret the absence of my fork and wish I had it back, especially if I ran out of forks during a party, or after too many days between running the dishwasher.

As Thanksgiving approached this year, I was thinking that we wouldn't have enough forks to go around and would have to use some of the second-string forks for the celebration. I'm a fussy hostess, and it still bugged me that I'd been so careless. I even contemplated getting a new set of flatware for the occasion, but that seemed absurd and wasteful since I have much of the previous set of utensils we'd relegated to second string when they started dwindling. Once again I told myself to let go of the lost fork. Just forget about it.

A couple of days later, I was back at the cafe with a homemade salad, but I'd forgotten to bring a fork. Feeling ostentatiously ridiculous, I leaned over the black marble counter and reached blindly, pulling a soup spoon, an iced tea spoon, a demitasse spoon, and a knife from four separate bins, but no fork. On the fifth try, from the last possible container, I pulled a handle and got a fork.

Lo and behold, it was MY fork.

Shock and awe. Blown mind. How could this be? Okay, so the cafe's dishwasher didn't notice the unusual fork and kept it in circulation. But that I could randomly pull my fork out without even looking seemed like a little miracle, an overwhelming instance of serendipity I was sure must have some meaning. But what?

In the course of trying to figure that out, I looked up the word "serendipity." It was coined by English author Horace Walpole in 1754, in a Sri Lankan fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, who always made happy and accidental discoveries of things they weren't looking for. Like Newton's apple leading to an understanding of gravity, or Columbus' discovery of America.

Odd coincidences make us wonder about the meaning of life. I like thinking of my fork as proof of that a deeper level of being is always working in concert with this physical realm to prod us toward our true direction and the flowering of our potential. The return of my fork sparked my curiosity about what other lost pieces of my life and consciousness might be on their way home to be reintegrated. I asked myself what I'd lost that I wanted back, and my Self answered, "Nurturance. Whimsy. Sufficiency. Completion. The power to create what you want."

Bring 'em on, I say. And welcome home.

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Suzanne Gold (BA, MA in psychology) is a personal and spiritual counselor in California. Also an award-winning vocalist and songwriter, she once sang the National Anthem for the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park. Suzanne works with individuals, couples, families, and small groups in person or by telephone. Her email address is {email Suzanne@SuzanneGold.com}Suzanne@SuzanneGold.com{/email} Send her the stories of the everyday wonders in your life. © copyright 2005 by Suzanne Gold.

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