Miracles

Home to rats and squirrels, these palm trees are the sentinels of the neighborhood. Directly across from my office window, they put on quite a show in a storm, swaying mightily as they do and sending bits of bark and leaves every which where. As for the magnolia, we almost lost this tree a couple years back; my son did some heavy pruning, we fed the heck out of it, and now it's covered with sweet furry buds, our own little miracle.

The other miracle of the day was the roofer coming early to fix the part of our roof ridge that had blown clear off the house yesterday. The neighbor found a nice chunk of our shingles in his yard and was kind enough to go up on his own roof to take some photos of our mess so we could see what was happening. Our friend J is a contractor whose signature line is, "I know a guy..."  A judiciously placed call got us almost instant help, a good thing, since it's supposed to rain all weekend. 

But what has been on my mind all day is not a miracle, but the need of one: the news that one of our grandson's football teammates had an accident while he was working out during break. The boy is in a coma, on life support. A boy. I don't know why this hit me so hard; I find I can hardly write this through the tears. I don't  know this boy. It's the crazy randomness--a young man can go out in the morning to do something he loves and not come back. I guess, really, it happens all the time. This one struck close to home. My heart goes out to his family, to his teammates, and to my grandson.