Taking a second look at the strange quilt of my life, I now see in retrospect that many spots become clearer little by little, taking on a deeper symbolic meaning. In a way, it reminds me of an exposed, latent paper print in a tray of developer as it slowly "comes to life", first faintly, a little blurry, then quickly emerging into its full range of a pre-visualized image from its creator with just nuances and nuances. Reflecting on the most important events of my life, a pattern emerges that challenges relegation to mere chance. I like to think that perhaps providence and destiny have something to do with it. That's why I'd like to refocus on some of the post-1970s events that moved me to the core and continue to impact and enrich my life to this day. As I stated at the beginning of my story, the reason for the loss of contact with our relatives in Russia was due to the fact that any contact with people in the West and especially with people in Germany or the USA meant incarceration for them, exile or worse. Stalin's KGB sent millions of its citizens to Siberian forced labor camps or eternal exile for lesser "crimes" than contact with the free world. For this reason, while living in Russia, our family had always been suspect, due to our mother's German language. origin, our father graduated from the German theological seminary, married a German subject, has two of their children living in Germany, and maintained contact with his wife's relatives outside the Soviet Union. Imagine! In any case, if it had not been for that chance/providential meeting with Congressman Kulakov in 1970, my life would not have come full circle and I personally would not have been enriched by the special people and events that followed. of paper……or more a distant “sparkling star” of the East, becomes here and now the object of my esteem. She in turn responds by choosing me as the godfather of her soon-to-be-born daughter. Then, on November 17, 1995, as I witness the miracle of Alexa's birth, my life takes on an even richer and fuller meaning, when I, in that life-changing moment, become her godfather, she my namesake, her my little "princess" a gifted, loving copy of her mother, whose debut on this side of heaven came in 1970, the year the missing pieces of the puzzle of my life finally fell into place. That mysterious and glittering object seen from afar is no longer just a figment of my imagination and becomes reality. So even the "strangest" patches in my "quilt of life" are no longer a mystery. Having found their right place; they are exactly where they rightfully belong. The "quilt" is now complete!