Welcome to Living a Life of Gratitude.
I'm Sarah Wiseman.
Brown Black Dog The first rain of the season is a call for caution where I live.
The roads,
Newly slick with accumulated grease and residue,
Haven't washed clean since summer.
Oil floats on the leaf-strewn asphalt,
A shimmer,
A rainbow,
An iridescence,
And also a treachery.
Around here,
We greet the first downpour as a welcome drink of moisture.
Come fall,
Everything's gone to chaff and stubble,
And we can't wait for the green this will bring.
Yet for drivers,
The rain is also disorienting.
On an afternoon in early October,
When I pick up my daughter from middle school,
The rain has been falling all day.
At 3.
15,
A patch of blue teases through the skittery clouds,
And I ease my way into the lineup of cars in the load-only zone,
Watching kids pile in with their books and backpacks and science projects.
My daughter,
Ever attentive,
Stands at the ready wearing just a t-shirt and jeans.
I've long since given up expecting that teenagers will wear normal things like jackets on rainy days.
Their bodies run hot,
And on days like this,
Drizzle moving to overcast,
Moving to sun,
And threatening to circle back again.
Well,
Weather is meaningless.
It's just not her reality.
What's the worst that can happen,
She says with a grin,
That I'll get wet?
She piles into the car with a friend we often drive home,
And they chat about the latest teen band,
The upcoming dance,
And the disgusting food on the school lunch menu.
It's all ordinary discussion,
Or an ordinary day.
Yet for some reason,
The dread in my heart won't lift.
I drive with excruciating caution in the school zone.
The chattering in the back increases in speed and volume and beautiful teenage insanity as I slow further.
They're laughing,
And I've slowed to 10 miles per hour in a 20,
With a herd of impatient cars behind me.
Everything seems normal.
Everything seems lovely.
On my left,
I see an older woman is raking leaves in her yard,
Like somebody out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
There are pumpkins on her stoop,
And the leaves dance in the wind.
So beautiful.
Why am I driving so slowly?
The brown-black dog enters my periphery,
A flash on my right,
For only a second before it's racing across the street toward the woman raking the leaves.
The dog bounds forward,
A young lab racing across the slick street,
Oil streaming on the surface.
The friend says loudly,
And in a strange way,
Look at that dog.
My daughter screams.
I see the dog disappear under the front wheel,
And I put the brakes on,
And we slide in slow motion.
I wait for the car to hit,
And I wait for the thud of the dog,
And I wait for the pain and the grief.
I see the dog's owner in the yard to the right,
The friendly brick house with the cobweb decorations,
Now frantically pumping her arms up and down on her legs,
A hand signal for no,
Stop,
Stay,
Come.
She is shouting,
But I hear no words.
The open screen door flaps.
The car skids to a stop.
I can't see the dog.
I wait for the thud,
The yelp,
The squeal,
And then the brown black dog bounds out from the wheel,
A flash in time reversing itself as if it had never run out at all.
Did you see that?
I say to the back seat,
Wanting to make sure I am not the only one who has seen this miracle.
My legs are on fire with adrenaline.
We almost hit that dog,
The front says.
Did you see that?
My daughter echoes.
The sun peeks through the clouds.
To my right,
The dog's owner is clucking and crying and hanging around the neck of the brown black dog.
Sometimes a miracle happens right in front of our eyes,
As if the angels who have been whispering to us insistently all day to pay attention,
Slow down,
Be aware,
Will also at the last minute reach down and alter the fabric of reality,
Change events before they happen,
Change events as they happen,
Or sometimes even after they happen.
Angels are here whether we see them or not.
They whisper to us continually,
Telling us the way in which we should go,
To the right,
To the left,
Faster,
Slower,
Without hesitation or with caution.
They interfere when interference is necessary.
When you look for the reality of a miracle,
When you choose to live in the reality of miracles,
Angels always appear.
Close your eyes and think about all the times that this has already happened in your life.
