What could aptly be described as a Christmas miracle would not have been possible without a series of setbacks for a woman living in Hiroshima Prefecture.

In 2017, the woman felt there was something wrong with her body. She often dropped her smartphone and her hands quivered uncontrollably.

In October that year, the 36-year-old was diagnosed with juvenile Parkinson’s disease, a rare, intractable disease that robs patients of the ability to move.

When she returned to her workplace following a leave of absence, she was wrongly accused of skipping work and was removed from her position.

Her work involved music, which she loved, but she decided to leave the company two years later.

In her hunt for a new job, she found some opportunities but felt she might have difficulties performing the required tasks because she had already lost the ability to walk without a cane.

Desperate, she decided to make a living by doing something that she was good at: making accessories.

On Dec. 6, 2020, she set up her first booth at a small Christmas market held in a wooden hall built at least 80 years ago.

She placed her homemade earrings and hairpins on a white cloth spread over a long table in a room decorated with a Christmas tree.

Just after noon, a woman with short hair stopped at the table and bought a pair of blue earrings made with dried flowers and rhinestones. She also purchased another pair shaped like stars, praising how cute they were.

That night, the woman received a message from the customer via Instagram, which read: “I had a chance encounter with charming earrings. I’m happy.”

The designer had never heard such compliments. She was overjoyed that the kind words had come from a complete stranger.

Less than a month later, the customer sent another message, saying some parts of the blue earring had come off.

The designer offered to fix it and asked the short-haired customer to send the earring via mail. A brown envelope containing the item arrived at the designer’s home.

If the designer had been living alone, her story could have ended here.

But she was living with her mother, who stared at the given name of the sender on the envelope.

The mother said the name was the same as the one she had given to her other daughter.

The designer knew her mother got divorced about 40 years ago and became separated from her then 6-month-old daughter. Although the mother delivered baby goods and toys to the family of her ex-husband, she never got another chance to see the daughter.

After the designer sent the fixed earring back to the customer, she was asked to repair other accessories.

She decided to meet the customer in person.

While they were eating at a restaurant, they talked about astrology. The customer’s birthday was the same as the one of the mother’s long-lost daughter.

The designer had a gut feeling that the customer was her older sister. But she was also worried that the customer knew about her mother and half-sister, and might not want to have anything to do with them.

The designer didn’t raise the topic.

Nearly a year later, in November 2021, the designer decorated the venue for a local event. She decided to invite the customer and her mother.

After the introductions, she told the customer, “She might be your mother.”

The short-haired woman said she had also been looking for her mother, whose name she found through a family registration and a residence certificate.

However, her shopping for the earrings at the Christmas market, and the request for repairs, were coincidences.

“How could it be even possible?” she said.

Tears welled in the eyes of the mother and her two daughters.

The designer now regularly exchanges messages with her sister, who is five years her senior, through the Line app, and talks about such things like the weather.

She also finds happiness when she thinks about her older sister, including what their conversation will be like on her birthday.

But the younger sister’s health condition worsened, and she no longer makes accessories because of difficulties moving her fingers.

Instead, she earns a living as an illustrator, using a tablet device to draw pictures for pamphlets and fliers.

She likens the colors she uses to the various stages of her life.

“To live is to keep drawing illustrations on a canvas, and to reapply the paint over and over until my life comes to an end,” she said.

She can’t imagine what her life would be like without any one of the “colors,” including her sickness, her job as an accessory designer, her decision to set up the booth, and her earrings that attracted her sister’s attention.