The assignment this month over on Northern Scribblers Online was to write about a windfall that happened to somebody. It made me remember the following true story. Go magic!

Miracle in the Parking Lot

Nothing makes you appreciate money more than not having any. Raising two boys on an income fixed at a level well below the basic needs of my family meant not having any was the norm for the last two weeks of every month. They were hungry boys, growing fast, and I liked to eat a bit myself.

On this day of days, I was desperate. What to do? We were out of everything: bread, cheese, pasta, condiments, anything the kids would eat, and my cheque wasn’t due for another week. I’d exhausted all the possibilities: I’d rolled up and spent the last of my collected coin stash and used every scrap and shred of food in the house. I didn’t know anyone I could borrow money from, and I was unwilling to get into a pattern of owing money I knew I couldn’t repay.

The ache in my chest swelled to bursting and I began to cry in pure thwarted need. I left the house and began walking in the direction of the grocery store. “God, fairies, whatever magic exists that cares and could help me, I really need it now. I don’t know where to turn. Please, my kids are hungry, help me.”

I repeated this prayer over and over like a litany, wandering aimlessly with my eyes to the ground, my tears mingling with rain that streamed from the deep gray belly of cloud that hung so close overhead I felt I could reach up and touch it, if it weren’t such a burdensome effort just maintaining an upright stance. Part of me wanted to give in, collapse to the ground, and let somebody else take care of my kids, somebody who could. I felt a horror of failure, beaten down by circumstances and my own painful inadequacy.

When I got to the grocery store, I stopped short. What was I doing here? I had no money to buy anything. I turned to walk through the parking lot, thinking to take the path that would lead to the beach on the other side. My cast-down eyes spotted a strange-looking scrap of paper flattened by the rain. Without hope or real curiosity, simply because my body seemed to want to, I walked over and picked it up.

It took a few heartbeats to recognize what I was holding, and when I did, my heart nearly stopped. It was a hundred dollar bill. I couldn’t have felt anymore stunned if it had been a million. Do these things really happen, my numb brain wondered? Who would drop a hundred-dollar bill in the parking lot?

An angel, maybe, or a helpful fairy. Perhaps my own desperate desire magicked the thing out of thin air. I didn’t care which. I only knew I had been saved, that my kids would eat.

When I walked home laden with everything from bread and cheese to toilet paper, I told my boys the story of the miracle in the parking lot. More than anything, more than the fact of finding the money or having enough food for the rest of the month, I was grateful for this evidence of real, practical magic in my sons’ lives. It made the stories of miracles and magic I loved to tell them seem more true and possible. A crack had opened in the grey clockwork universe that let shards of light, colour and mystery enter my world and the eyes and minds of my children.

Grey Cup Sunday, nineteen eighty something. Gary and I were driving out of Edmonton that evening, after the Eskimos won the game.

We weren’t traveling that night by choice. My husband was a truck driver, and I was going with him down to the coast. It was our version of a vacation, but the timing sucked. Our friends and the rest of the sports-mad city were celebrating wildly. We hated to miss it, but the decision had been made, and we were on our way.

A few kilometres west of Spruce Grove, I had just settled into the somnolent state induced by long trips in a big truck. The snow was blowing horizontally in serpentine streams, startlingly white in the truck headlamps against the black highway. I was jolted alert by Gary’s urgent mutter, “What the fuck?”

The next few seconds stretched over a thousand years. The tractor-trailer traveling toward us in the other lane had rolled perpendicularly on its side and slewed wildly in our direction, stretching across the road from shoulder to shoulder. Gary pumped the brakes hard, but the highway was icy and momentum is momentum. It took forever to bring the massive, fully-loaded semi to a full stop. Meanwhile the approaching wall of truck loomed ever closer. Bright golden friction sparks flew from the bottom of the trailer as it bounced and scraped across the blacktop.

I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t anything. I was just watching and waiting. Time dilated massively. When we finally stopped, the trailer continued to glide inexorably toward us, smoothly and evenly now, like the future moving toward the past. With infinite patience, I waited to die.

At last, it stopped a dozen paces ahead of us. Gary mobilized into action, leaping from his seat and running to help the other driver, while I remained in my seat, frozen in shock, staring at a wall that filled my world.

I found out later that a drunken Edmonton fan who, like Gary, had to work that night, was driving his road grader down the wrong side of the road. The eastbound truck was forced to swerve into the ditch to avoid him, then jacknifed and fell on its side.

I don’t think my heartrate even accelerated during the whole process. It was like dreaming, or watching a fascinating but not frightening film. It had my full attention, no question about that. But fear? No.