My daughter says so, and I believe her! |
"Mommy, Mommy! Look at me!" cries my nine year old from high in the tree. She's three stories high-- climbed up there by herself. "I found my red kite! It's on top of Grammy's house!" She's in an old pine where dead boughs abound. A branch breaks in her hand and she heads towards the ground. I swear for a moment she stops in mid air-- others too, who were standing there. She lands curled around a jagged piece of metal fence-- completely calm, neither crying nor tense. As if a child carried in your arms was put asleep in her bed, safe from all harm. Forty-five feet she fell, the policeman guessed, onto packed dry dirt in her little blue dress. How she missed the fence, not a mark or a bruise, he couldn't believe it, he hadn't a clue. Still for safety's sake, the ambulance came and they carefully moved her though she insisted no pain. X-rays and MRI scans, the doctor was in awe-- there were no broken bones, no bruises he saw. Her spleen was fine, as were her neck and back: he couldn't believe the total lack of injuries with a three story fall. "The angel caught me," she explained it all. "She was pretty, with long golden hair, said it wasn't safe to beclimbing there. "Did you see her, Mommy?" I shook my head no, but remembered that moment when she seemed to stop so. An angel rescued my child, caught her mid a life-threatening fall. The doctor was speechless, couldn't explain it at all. "She should have been broken or possibly dead-- a fall from that height," he mused, shaking his head. "Not a mark on her, she's perfectly fine. She's a lucky young lady-- intervention sublime." "She's the angel lady," my daughter said. "And she watches me from morning 'til bed." Do I believe in angels? Not a doubt in my mind. For one caught my daughter that summer she was nine. I believe she still watches and guides her way, keeping her safe from day to day. In the Navy over in the mid-east, on board her ship, and to say the least-- through several close calls in the two decades since-- I'll never doubt her angelic experience. 44 lines |