Raft of Miracles

Blindsided, I was. One minute, I was so busy patting my own back and vocalizing attaboys to my audience of one (me) as I negotiated a beautiful, pristine DIY raft down a gentle stream, that I failed to notice as the waters became a tiny bit choppy. I was standing on my raft, knees locked, as we are prone to do when we are overconfident. My legs buckled. I felt it in my lower back – that slight twinge. I blamed it on a myriad of things: the tarlov cysts in my sacrum, the osteopenia in my hips, the mature onset scoliosis. The only thing I knew for sure, without doubt, is that the problem was not my raft. I watched so many YouTube videos. I read so many Buzzfeed articles. I am the Mary Ann, after all, not a speck of Ginger Grant in me. Gilligan’s Island voted me most likely to bake the pie, scare away the headhunters, fix the radio, and woo the professor, all in half an hour. The raft I’d expertly crafted was unsinkable. Yet, it began to careen toward the left bank. Next, it struck a wayward log on its rapid shift toward the right bank. I sat down, hard. The rope I’d used to secure my oars snapped like a used hair tie on a too thick ponytail. Foamy, cold water splashed onto my legs, soaking my shoes. I looked up to a vision of howling winds, breaking branches, and an angry, navy blue sky. “I don’t even recognize this landscape,” I screamed, internally. “What has become of me? This was supposed to happen differently. It wasn’t supposed to be this way at all!” It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a river rapid vacation gone wrong. It’s just snippet of the basic feel of my life as an almost 55-year-old orphan.

As a child, I was aware of the age gap between my parents. Honestly, my Dad aged in slow motion, and sometimes backwards. You wouldn’t have realized he was nearly 20 years her senior unless you were told. Even then, you might not have believed the tale. So, to say that his death at the age of 91 shocked me sounds silly. How had I not expected it, you may wonder? I just didn’t. The week prior, he’d been standing on top of his massive RV, sweeping, cutting branches that were hanging too close, and inspecting the seals. Ted’s Rule of Motorcoaches, Vol 7, lists this rule: an RV is only as good as the roof seal. He’d just reroofed his house with limited assistance. He’d just replumbed his bathroom, carrying a porcelain toilet into his yard unassisted. I thought he’d live forever, until he didn’t. But, I still had a mom, and after all, I knew it would play out like this. I knew she’d outlive him. I also thought I’d get more than 3 years before she left us. I never imagined the horror and heartbreak that would exist in those 3 years, either. There was no history of dementia in the family, no reason to think she would forget me or come to despise me. There was no hint that we would argue incessantly over her escape attempts or that she would forget her sweet only granddaughter, asking me thousands of times each day to tell her the name of the pretty girl hanging over the piano. I was ill prepared for her to dislike the noise of her great-grandchildren or to be fearful of the dogs she loved just the day before. Yet, all of those things happened, smooth to choppy in record speed.

I don’t speak of religious ideologies very often. I feel ignorant of most doctrines, and the world is full of people that become experts on things way too quickly. But, today, at church, they spoke of miracles, of the ones we want that become the ones we expect that become the ones we are indignant over if they escape us. I have long fallen into that category. What good are miracles, after all, if you’re never on the receiving end? Didn’t I pray long enough or hard enough for a different ending when my daughter passed away? And, what miracle did I receive from that effort? Congratulations on your prayers. Here’s some cancer for you. Oh, and, as a gift with purchase, let’s have your husband’s employer implode into nonexistence. Oh, but wait, there’s more. Since you prayed in the last 15 minutes, you get, for free, an arm mortgage that can skyrocket in the blink of an eye. Thanks a heap, 2008. But, today, I realized something. It’s a big one, maybe big enough to right my wonky raft, or to at least vault me toward a kindly hanging tree. Here it is: I’m a happy person. I wake up every morning, smiling. I love my husband, my children, those precious grandchildren, these incredibly goofy dogs of mine, and the cats that unzip my purse each night and throw parties with my lipliners. I am optimistic. I am rarely in a bad mood. I cannot remember the last time I was angry. That, my friends, is a true miracle. Raft be darned, I’ve been looking for the wrong miracle for many, many years. It’s been right here, waiting to be granted, this whole time.