While Jinx Broussard, Louisiana State University professor and NYT Institute mentor, drove me to an interview last week, my world got much, much smaller in a matter of minutes.

It all started with a story.

I told her that when I was 14, my father, Joseph Lucas Jr., originally from New Orleans, and my grandfather Joseph Lucas Sr., who still lives here, took me east through the town of Vacherie in St. James Parish to an even tinier, underdeveloped “town” (for lack of a better and smaller-sounding word). The place was called Moonshine – yes, it is that country. For my grandparents and step-grandmother, once upon a time this was home and life was hilariously simple.

I grinned at my recollection of the sleepy community in the middle of all the farmland I could ever stand to see, then was shocked when Jinx burst out laughing, saying she was from the same area.

Jinx knew exactly which St. Luke’s Baptist Church I was talking about when I told her about my visit to the tiny town’s white clapboard cultural landmark. She knew the church was situated near a levee, blocking the Mississippi River from wiping the unincorporated area off the map.

I had to investigate: “Call Dad, call Grandma up in Seattle, try to catch Grandpa while he’s home,” I told myself as we arrived at the interview site, and I closed the car door.  

After another adventure that weekend – this time through the partly abandoned streets off Paris Avenue in New Orleans looking for yet another interview – we stopped by my grandparents’ home on Poland Avenue in the city’s Ninth Ward.

I’ll never forget it.  

After introductions and catching up with my grandparents, I explained the link both Jinx and I felt she had to my grandparents. Once they started naming older family members – nodding at their recollections of them from the past, I couldn’t help but grin.

Our families had known each other at some point in the past – her last living aunt and cousin knew my grandparents, and they both knew Jinx’s father, among other family members.

Looking at the living room photos, Jinx smiled wide saying, “I feel like I’ve gone home. This is just too much!” It turns out some of our relatives actually lived in the same area – converted from a former plantation in the area.

As they pieced together portions of each other’s family trees, I sat with Grandpa thinking of how random the whole thing was. Here I am from Seattle, studying in Washington, D.C., in New Orleans for two weeks and by complete chance, I meet a mentor at the Institute who knows most of my father’s side of the family I’ve never even met because of the distance between us all.

Realizing how small the world can be, I couldn’t help but appreciate the simple gift of oral history and the value of old African-American communities – regardless of the anonymity and fractured spirit some of ours see today.

“You see, the world is round,” Grandma May said, with her typical all-knowing facial expression. “It’s all a cycle.”

Grandma May blew us a kiss as we drove away and I realized there’s so much more for me to learn about my family, and soon. Thinking about Grandma May’s theory of the round universe, I still wonder how long I have left to come full circle.