The twins were out for the evening, and Benjamin seemed satisfied to reread his joke book, so I had free reign to pick the show.

"What do frogs write letters on?"

"I give up."

"Lily pads!"

After a crickets worth of clicks I landed on Planet Earth. The scenes of penguins, and otters, bug eating plants, and rock tripping goats transported me far away from the events of my day. David Attenborough's smooth voice guided me through the intricacies of how chin straps daddies keep their one irreplaceable egg balanced on their feet at the bottom of the earth while they themselves go hungry for a third of a year. Humpback whales have no food either, for the five months while they stay in warm, algaeless waters nursing their calves, who by the way guzzle five hundred liters of milk a day. That sounds like a drain of strength to me, even more severe than when I was nursing twins and skipped breakfast. 

One of the recurring themes I noticed was timing. Those penguins I talked about travel fifty miles, first the females to go back to sea to find food, while the faithful fathers wait. Wait until the brink of both hypothermia and starvation. Then at what must seem like the last possible moment the mamas return to take over egg care while the exhausted daddies get a chance to trudge back to swim in search of food. 

Then there is drought. The ebb and flow of water lures entire herds of elk, and elephants, across the savannas. The extremes of parched land swiveling with flood plains creates a rhythm that stretches whole species to their limit. Somehow the unseen orchestration leads to herds arriving in the right place just as the rain begins to fall. Almost as if it all makes sense. 

Which makes me wonder if the sequence of my life is perhaps not as haphazard as it feels.