My maternal grandfather Bernard told me that as a young man, he was on his way home late one night from visiting my grandmother when they were still dating. He fell asleep while driving, and woke up just in time to prevent his car from driving off a cliff. So I am that close to not existing.
Emma's maternal grandmother Phyllis in Australia had been married to a man before she married Emma's grandfather Frank. Phyl's first husband was killed in Singapore by the Japanese in World War II. Then, years later, as I have been told the story, Phyl was walking down a street in Sydney and just happened to bump into Emma's grandfather Frank--who she had known years before...years before the war...from a town where they both lived. From there, the rest is history...but Emma was that close to not existing. A bullet in the war that flew six inches in a different direction, a chance encounter on a sidewalk that could have been delayed by an untied shoelace, a stoplight that was green instead of red...and Emma's personal history could have been extinguished decades ago.
My own father died in an accident when I was 4 that could have very easily taken my own life.
Finally, I first met Emma when I saw her in a window as I drove by a salon where she was working on January 13 (I think it was) 2002, and decided I needed a hair cut. What if I had taken a different route home that night in January 2002? What if Emma had been on break right when I drove by the salon, and not standing in front in the window where her station was located?
Emma...me...Matilda...every one of us are all infinitesimally close to having never existed...but because of that, it's all the more miraculous that she--and any one of us--even exists, and therein lies all we need to marvel at our own miraculousness and holiness.
No comments:
Post a Comment