They’re not miracles. You can call them that, and sometimes I do, but we’re all going to die someday, and the fact I didn’t croak Monday is just life. Maybe, it’s just death. Monday my pooch and I were not tapped by a live, falling electric wire.
Last week I was on Interstate 540 heading to work. One near experience on the road is plenty, but the teleporter is in the shop. There’s slow traffic ahead. I signal, check the mirror then ease into the left lane, just like I do 249 other times a year — oh, 237, counting furlough days. I felt more than heard a vibration. In my mirror I saw a car scoot onto the left shoulder then back on the lane. It evidently had been in my blind spot for some time. He didn’t honk, when he passed later he did not gesture at me. A close one.
Think of all the other close calls that must happen constantly but are impossible to perceive.
Most people I know call this God, grace of God, divine intervention. One of my Fort Smith school buddies had parents able and willing to buy him a new sports car when he got his license at 16. He always was incredibly reckless, peeling out on motorbikes, waterskiing across boat wakes on Lake Tenkiller, whatever. He drove the red T-top Corvette like news photographers I later knew. Sure he got tickets, but he never wrecked. Now he has a great job in another state, still married to his high school sweetheart, kids etc. Back then he always told me he had a “guardian angel.”
The only miracle is that more of us don’t die younger. It’s federal car, highway and air safety regulations, sure, but all that amazes me is how rarely we get run over when we cross tricky streets. Cancer in young adults is tragic and terrifying precisely because it actually is unusual.
My Beloved and I didn’t know about the rain until we awoke to the forecast Monday morning on KUAF, our NPR station, 40-60 percent. I checked the bedroom window then hustled Mani the Tibetan terrier downstairs and out the back door, for his first outing of the day. (The fewer times we towel-dry the shaggy 2-year-old the happier we all are.)
It just began sprinkling. I saw that we had left out a patio table and two chairs so I folded them up and leaned them by the door rather than head first into the grass. I then turned toward the yard, felt a sharp gust of wind. A shower of sparks floated down onto the lawn just ahead of one end of a pole-to-pole electric wire. We were told later that a small branch behind the house next door had snapped and fallen onto the wires.
The sparks popped, and Mani looked at me barking. He knew to run away from that but all he saw was the wall of the house. I turned for the door, shouted his name and he ran in with me. MB was upstairs screaming, she saw the wire and sparking but not us.
Pup and me were feet from wet ground and a hot wire. I had thought about taking up the furniture after we found the best tree for Mani’s raised leg.
Swepco came within a half-hour. Took the crew three hours to put up a new line. You bet I’ve prayed my thanks many times since. But it can’t be a miracle.
