It was 1974 when a friend gave us a beat-up old Volkswagen van. One of our two old cars, had completely failed. My second husband, Paul, and I were living in a small converted barn in Peekskill, NY with my daughter. I was pregnant, and our driveway was steep—about forty feet long, sloping sharply down to where the van was parked.
We still had an old SAAB. Paul went to the basement to retrieve a bald tire. Planning to wedge it between the SAAB and the van to push the van up the driveway. He placed it in the back seat.
Before getting into the passenger side, I touched the tire.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly—and got into the car.
We drove down the driveway and parked, ready to position the tire between the two vehicles.
The tire was gone.
There was no place it could have rolled. Still, Paul walked the area for over an hour, increasingly upset, searching everywhere it might have landed.
I stayed calm.
“Science doesn’t have every answer,” I said. “It keeps learning. It isn’t absolute.”
This didn’t go over well. Paul was a chemist. He trusted what could be measured. I’d always felt that everything was potentially possible, even if improbable.
We called the owner of the van to ask if there was some kind of trap door underneath.
There wasn’t.
The tire was never found.
Two years after that, my daughter, my son, and I went shopping at a local store. As we walked out of the store there was a small orange car parked directly in front of us, right by the door.
I glanced inside.
The interior was wood—burled wood, the kind you’d see in a Rolls-Royce. I knew wood. My father loved carpentry and taught me how to recognize it. There was no license plate.
We walked around the car and took a few steps toward our own vehicle.
Then, instinctively, I turned around.
The car was gone.
I didn’t say a word. I asked my children if they’d noticed anything unusual. They just looked at me—they hadn’t turned back at all.
Later that evening, after settling them in, I got into my car and drove about ten minutes to Ossining, New York, to see Dr. Andrija Puharich.
Andrija was a parapsychologist known for bringing Uri Geller to the United States, and for working with Peter Hurkos and Ingo Swann. Aldous Huxley had helped him build a Faraday cage for experiments. He studied everything from shamanism to Tesla’s work, and we knew each other well. He had invited me to attend his Monday night physics classes as a guest and to work with him and Marcel Vogel.
I told him exactly what had happened.
He shrugged. “That was a mini Rolls-Royce.”
“That’s their way of proving to you that apport (disappear and reappear elsewhere) are real,” he said.
At the time, he had a barrel of objects he claimed had been apported from Israel, brought over by Uri Geller, who had left items behind when he came to the U.S.
That was that.
I’ve never told this story to convince anyone of anything. I don’t need it to be proven. What matters to me is what it invites us to consider.
We don’t have answers for everything. And maybe we’re not meant to.
The mystery of the universe is the biggest question we’ll ever face—and it has layers right here on Earth. I find that idea delightful. Life becomes far more interesting when we leave room for yeah… maybe. When we allow curiosity alongside knowledge. When we don’t lock ourselves into routines of certainty.
Seriousness has its place.
But so does playfulness.
And wonder—especially wonder—keeps doors open.
A Moment to Wonder
Life doesn’t need to be fully explained to be deeply interesting.
Sometimes curiosity is enough.
Question for you:
What’s one experience in your life that still makes you say, “Well… maybe”?
With warmth and curiosity,
Nancy
