If a tree falls in the forest will it land on you?
The day before New Year’s Eve, as I was vacuuming the bedroom carpet, my cell phone rang. It was my husband.
“I almost just got killed,” he gasped.
“What happened?” I gasped back.
Earlier that morning I had written out a brief shopping list. Apparently, on his way out the front door, my husband remembered that he’d forgotten the list. He could have winged it, but instead he headed back through the house to the kitchen table to find the yellow, ruled pad of paper on which I had scrawled four items. It probably took him all of thirty seconds to turn around, find the pad, tear off the page and make his way, once again, out the door. That put him thirty seconds behind schedule. Just enough time to place him almost to the end of the road, to catch the commotion in the treetops, as the old pine tore her roots from the earth and came crashing down across the pavement immediately in front of his van.
survival kit
cotton balls
lobster tails
toothpaste
water
(thirty seconds)
When I put down the phone—even though my husband would tell me not to, that it is cow dung and makes me cough—I lit a stick of incense. I sat cross-legged on the newly vacuumed rug and watched the slender ribbon of pearl-grey smoke unfurl itself in luminous swirls toward the ceiling like a wordless prayer.
Sometimes when you inhale, you need to remember that you’ve just been given another chance.