I left the house before 11am today to buy pastries. We were entertaining guests at 4pm.
After picking up the pastries, I proceeded to a grocery store 7 miles away and shopped.
I took a different route back to avoid traffic. Near home, I passed our Post Office, and remembered that we had to stop our mail for a week as we were going on vacation. I took a U-turn.
It was 1pm (on a Saturday) and a lady had just shut the glass door. She saw me and opened it.
I picked up a pen; it took me 3 minutes to fill out the form that stops mail delivery temporarily. Another lady at the counter told the stragglers inside that she had shut down her sale terminal and they would have to go to another Post Office nearby, for their transactions.
I waved my yellow stop mail card and asked if she would accept it. She did.
My Mini Miracle terminology stems from the fact that I needn’t have passed by the Post Office at the last minute, that the closed door opened, and that my application was verified and accepted.
It’s mini because there was an alternative - I’d have to trouble my neighbors to take care of my mail daily.
Throughout my journey I’ve labeled happy unexpected outcomes from mini to medium to major miracles.
I simply have to write about a major miracle in my life here, that happened fifteen odd years ago.
I took the family for a day trip to Muddy Creek Falls. It had been a long time dream of mine to bathe under a waterfall and I did just that, after inching my way backward from the shore to the fall.
My wife and sixth-grader son took pictures.
We proceeded to the next waterfall (within walking distance). It is called Swallow Falls, and we were looking at the water below us falling over steep rock steps. Each step was as tall as a two-story house.
I should have paid better attention to our son, who found a way down an incline to race down to the lower step. I gave chase as he climbed down to the step (ledge) below and ran over the flat surface before jumping over a narrow stream of water, to a dry area on the other side. Then he proceeded to walk backwards to the falling water descending from the upper level. Perhaps he intended to take a shower under the waterfall.
As he reached the fall - there was a gap or a hole between the sheer vertical surface of the upper rock and the flat rock we were on - he fell into the hole which was frothing with water.
I witnessed his feet, knees, waist, chest and finally head disappear below the surface of the water.
I looked at the stream he had jumped across. If I jumped and fell, the rushing water would drop me to another ledge below us. I looked at my phone. it had no signal. I waved and hollered in vain at people at the bottom of the fall and wondered about what options I had left. Brain damage to Trino from being under water was my initial concern.
As I turned from the folks below to face his direction again, there was Trino, standing on terra firma (albeit wet terra firma) at my level.
When he got near, I asked him how he had climbed out of the hole. He shrugged that it was no big deal.
I envisioned him under swirling water, holding his breath, putting his hands on the wet edge of the hole, pulling himself up without slipping, with water falling on him from a height. In my mind, IT JUST DIDN’T ADD UP.
My wife was above the falls looking around. She knew nothing about what had happened until we climbed up to her level and told her.