In the States, though, a friend took many months to find his young daughter – and counted himself lucky. She was several states away and found only after he'd contributed to publication of her photo on milk containers.
In the past couple of weeks, the farmer and I have lived and breathed one-degree connections.
They began when the farmer's brother and his partner headed to a ram sale in Canterbury. They met a couple on the ferry, went their separate ways at Picton, but found themselves parked together at Kaikoura.
Turns out the couple, from Cambridge, were lifelong friends of a cousin and his wife, plus the husband was a school friend of a friend's brother.
They were lighthouse fans and a planned trip north included Pouto Lighthouse. It was logical they would stay here at Batley. All eight of us caught up: Cambridge couple, school friend's brother and wife, farmer's brother and partner, and the farmer and me.
Then on the day before Easter, I wished an aunt happy birthday and she mentioned that a lifelong friend from her nursing days lived in the Riverview Retirement Village in Maungaturoto.
On Easter Friday, en route to a fundraising meeting for a dementia unit in that village, I stopped in town for a coffee and met a former local who now lives in Ngatea. She was staying with her mother – my aunt's friend. We hadn't made the connection till then.
Another link: the aunt of one of her friends, Bet, was my grandmother's bridesmaid. It was a fluke that Bet and I figured that out.
After the fundraising meeting, at which we decided the Kaipara garden tour would be in February 2020, I returned home then visited a couple staying in our cabin.
The farmer and I had met him and knew he was related to me by marriage. But we didn't know his wife or that she had Batley connections. Years back she'd dated a local man whose mother collected bottles which many decades earlier had been buried in the sand.
In the late 1800s and into the next century, Batley had a wharf and sailing regattas. It was party central. Oodles of empties went overboard. No recycling then.
The farmer's guidance led Nan, the bottle gatherer, to rewarding finds. Our guest had often been 'bottling' with her.
The visit stirred up long-buried memories for all of us. Then she and I discovered we'd lived a few streets apart as children and had attended the same schools.
I'm wondering who we'll meet next. Or who we already know who is just one degree away.
All it seems to take is a willingness to connect and the right conversation – but we can never know what that is until we've had it.
