The miracle experiment

I am at my Dad’s house working on his book—photographs of steam engines he took in the 50s and 60s. Dad has Alzheimer’s and when I first walk in there are prints and negatives all over his desk and study.

“What happened here?” I say.

“I don’t know,” he says irritably. “I don’t know why all these negatives are on my desk. Some stranger must have come in in the middle of the night and messed everything up.”

I start laughing.

“Dad,” I say. “That just didn’t happen.”

He says he doesn’t remember doing it but since he lives alone the only other person who could have done it is him, and he doesn’t like being blamed. I say I don’t like to be blamed for things I did either, and then to make him feel better, I pull out my phone and show him a picture of my desk—covered with my Christmas arts and crafts.

He says, “Good Lord! How do you get anything done?” “I don’t,” I say.

We start looking a negative I need for chapter 13. My husband sent me out to get it, and I have no idea where to even start. Tommy had mentioned an engine number, but Dad has the negatives arranged by wheel arrangement. We are sorting through thousands of tiny black-and-white squares when, as if summoned by an invisible whistle, Dad gets up and puts on his coat. The wood pile is calling. This happens once or twice a day: He will get up suddenly and go outside to cover or uncover the wood pile. It is a connection that only he and the land he cares for understand, but I know better than to get in the way of it.

I keep sorting through piles of black-and-white photos of trains. “You’re welcome,” I say to my mother. There is no response. It’s her birthday. I’d gotten up that morning and written her a birthday card asking what it was like where she was. Was she soaring with the comets? Playing Pinochle with Grandpapa and Uncle Coop? Is the Universe singing all the time the way I think it is?

I was hoping I would get some kind of sign or visitation, but the day was plodding along as usual. There was no appearance in a dream, no smell of her kitchen, even in her kitchen. No sound of her voice just before I woke up.

The door slams and Dad is back, the smell of woodsmoke and pine coming off his jacket. He’s wearing an electric blue scarf that Mom made him in 1964, the first year they were married. “That’s the scarf Mom knitted for you,” I say.

“I know!” he says. “I always wear it. I love it.”

I say, “Today is her birthday, did you remember?” and he says, “Of course!” I’m so relieved. I don’t care if he can’t remember where he put his glasses or why the negatives are all over the living room, or even who I am or why I’m at his house. But I’m not ready for the day he forgets Mom, even though I know it’s probably coming, the way many things we aren’t ready for arrive on their own terms.

I call Tommy to find out exactly what negative I’m looking for. He is impatient with me because he texted me all the details. I am impatient right back because the details are full of numbers of engines and wheel arrangements that mean nothing to me, no matter how many times you tell me or put them in ALL CAPS.

I hang up the phone. “I’m going to kill my husband,” I say.

“What was the date of the picture?” Dad asks, and I say, “Christmas 1964.”

Dad says that he put the date on each negative. We keep looking. Something pulls me to an envelope marked, “Selected negatives.” And there it is! December 25, 1964, Merida, Yucatan. “Hooray!!” Dad says. We are jubilant! All is right in the world! Chapter 13 is saved!

I say I’m still going to kill my husband.

“You might need him for something else,” Dad says mildly.

He offers me a piece of cake and I tell him I’m trying not to eat sugar. He looks at me as if I’ve beamed in from Jupiter. He still has Mom’s scarf wrapped around his neck. “You know what’s amazing?” I say. “That scarf is older than me and it hasn’t faded one bit since Mom made it.”

“It’s getting brighter,” Dad says.

He’s right. It is. It is a magic scarf, just like any day that you wake up and all the people you love are alive and safe and making the messes they like to make is magic.

“What would I do without you?” Dad says when I leave. “You find everything!”

It’s working! I think when I get in the car, and what I mean by that is when I’d gotten up that morning, I’d asked to be a miracle in someone else’s day. It’s a game I’d been playing all week, and it came from podcast by Danielle Egnew about prosperity. She said something to the effect of letting go of the idea of making money for the sake of making money, and instead, try bringing in prosperity by asking that your gifts and talents be the miracle in someone’s day. Yeah! I thought. That’s what I want! Put me in in the time and place where I can say or do or write something that is the miracle in someone’s day. I don’t even want to know about it. Just let it happen.

The first day, right away, I drove by a car accident. I was driving fast, late for hot yoga because I had filled up my water bottle before I left, and just past the hospital I saw a car in a ditch, the person in the driver’s seat slumped over and unconscious. People had already pulled over, a man in a Carhartt jacket was calling an ambulance. The minivan in front of me pulled off the road and a woman, fresh off her shift, still in hospital scrubs wearing a lanyard, got out and walked briskly toward the car. The expression on her face was purposeful and calm. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was made for this. It made me want to cry. There is something sacred in being in the presence of people who know what they are doing, especially in a time of mercy. She was going to be that driver’s miracle, along with the man in Carhartt jacket and I was helplessly grateful for both of them.

A policeman waved me on, so I went to yoga. The studio was hot. Hot, hot, hot! The inspirational quote of the day was about forgiving other people, and I was so hot I forgave everyone. At the end of class I lay still as the studio emptied out and then I heard someone weeping—a woman, the only other person left in the room. I said, “Do you want company?” She nodded. I put my arms around her. I thought someone had died. I said, “Are you hurt?” She said her f—ing narcissistic ex-husband was being a dick and she wanted to go to his house and wring his goddamn neck.

“Yeah,” I said. “Forgiveness is a great healer, but sometimes you have to give yourself a little space to be really f—ing mad.”

That made us both laugh, and reminded me of all the times I tried to skip rage and get to forgiveness. It didn’t go well! I’m not saying anyone should act out on rage by doing physical or emotional harm to anyone else. But if you skip over it and try to forgive too soon, it will go deep and burn quietly and you might think you’re walking around being a good and compassionate human, but it’s more like you have a neon sign over your head that shouts, Angriest person in the world!

I didn’t know if I was the miracle in her day, but the elegance of this whole thing is that you can’t think about it or try, because the second you do, you lose it. It’s almost like you have to set the intention and then forget about it. Also if you do something rude or awkward because you’ve been out to Agway with your dad and afterward you took him to JoAnn fabrics because you needed glue dots and that store was way too much for him so he completely shut down and then someone started trying to help him by saying “Sir, sir, are you OK?” and you say, “He’s fine!” only it came out like a bark, you will feel terrible. You will think forget it. Now I am the jerk in someone else’s day.

I come back from Dad’s, and later my husband and I go Christmas shopping. We go to another craft store because I need washi tape, and now I’m in a bad mood because, there is nothing like a big-box store full of plastic and glitter and forever chemicals and speakers blasting canned carols to make me lose my Christmas spirit. We stop at T.J. Maxx. More plastic. Flammable pajamas. “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!” is playing, and I think, Is it though? A lot of people get depressed around Christmas. And when did we decide that it had to include SO. MUCH. PLASTIC?!! My husband is buying ugly Christmas sweaters for him and our children. “Those are going to end up in a landfill,” I say, and he says, “Nope, I’m going to wear mine all day. Look! It lights up!”

The sticker actually says “I light up!”

On the way home, we pull up to a stoplight near our favorite bakery, and Tommy reminds me that our friend Kirsten and her youth orchestra, the Heifetz violin ensemble, are playing there today—should we go in? I say that’s fine, but I don’t want to stay long because I’m still mad about the forever chemicals.

It is so lovely inside. The bakery is small and narrow, with green walls and handwoven baskets full of bread. Garlands of dried fruit and handmade straw ornaments hang in the windows. Paper stars float near the ceiling. Gentle white lights decorate greenery. It reminds me of some of my favorite stores in New York around this time of year, 500-square-foot rooms decorated with pine boughs and white lights, where shopkeepers have spent hours on the windows and when you go inside you feel like you’re in someone’s favorite room and they are offering you all their best things. My friend Kirsten is standing in front of her ensemble—only violins and a piano. The violinists are all fresh-faced and beautiful, some wearing Santa hats. The bakery barely has enough room to hold them, but that doesn’t bother anyone. It smells like flour and chai and dark coffee. The girl behind the counter has curly hair and an open, friendly face and she sings along to “Deck the Halls” while making hot chocolate for a man in a blue hat.

The orchestra starts playing “Oh Christmas Tree,” and Boom!

My mother is there. I can’t explain this, except to say that my heart knows and before my mind can say anything and I am overcome with tears. It is undeniable. I am fine when I go into the store, but then—wham!—I can’t see her but I can feel her. She fills the room. It’s all I can do to keep from falling to my knees.

The first time this happened to me was in my 20s. I was walking past McSorley’s on Seventh Street in New York City, and all of a sudden I missed my dead grandfather so much, I started crying. It came out of nowhere. My boyfriend at the time said, “What’s wrong with you?” and I said, “I don’t know.” My grandfather had died years ago. I later found out that he and my grandmother had lived on that street above McSorley’s when they were first married. At the time I thought the tears were because I missed someone who was gone. But now I think the tears were letting me know that the person I missed was there.

I am not thinking of this now, I am thinking, Get ahold of yourself, Barry. You can’t just walk into a bakery where people are happily listening to Christmas carols and buying bread and start sobbing. I go to the counter and order a pretzel. I say, “Those look like really good!” as if that will explain why my eyes are watering, and the girl with the friendly open face says, “We only make them this time of year.”

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” I hear the Universe singing. Good one, I think. Ha ha.

We stay for a while, enchanted, listening to more songs and I watch my friend doing the work she was meant to do on this earth, which you can see so clearly when she conducts because joy radiates from every pore of her being.

I see her partner, who was one of my mother’s best friends. “Are you crying?” she says. “Mom’s here,” I say. Her eyes fill too, and she says, “Get out of here.”

I get into the car with my pretzel and LOSE IT. I miss my mom so much! Sometimes this world is so sad! And so beautiful! I am crying full on, shoulders heaving. The grief comes in waves. Now I miss everyone I love who is gone, including my cat Veronica and my sister’s dog Blue.

Tommy says, “What happened?” I’m crying so hard I can’t say anything, so I don’t for three traffic lights. Then I wipe my eyes and start eating my pretzel. “Nothing,” I say.

Tommy laughs. After a while I tell him that Mom was there. “Did you feel it?” I say, and he says, no, he doesn’t feel things like that. I say, “I don’t believe you,” and he says that’s fine, and we drive the rest of the way home happily not saying much. When we pull into the driveway it is snowing. A light in our living room is glowing and our street looks like it might have looked a hundred years ago. I think of my friend—who could be in a bakery in a small town or Carnegie Hall, it doesn’t matter, her joy in her work would be the same—pulling in my mother who loved Christmas more than any of us without even knowing what she was doing.

The thing about asking to be a miracle in someone’s day is this: You might start out wanting to be the miracle for someone else, and maybe you are and that feels good, and maybe you aren’t and that feels bad, or you have no idea, there are a lot of things you’ll never know about how you are in the world. But after a while what really comes through is the way other people—other beings—a stranger, a cat, a friend being themselves, snowflakes stepping down from the sky like ballerinas—become the miracle in yours.

Here is my friend Kirsten and the Heifetz ensemble being miraculous.

Thank you so much for reading! You are the miracle in my day.

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Happy, festive holidays everyone!

Other things:

The Mystic’s Cafe will be on Saturday, December 20th at 1:00 EST on zoom. Bring a notebook and a cup of tea and some burning questions and we’ll hang out and talk about all things mystical. I’ll share some of my favorite techniques for developing self-trust and hearing your own intuition.

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