Modern Miracles

Modern Miracles

Some say miracles are a figment of our overactive imagination, or putting too much foolish importance on what was written in the Bible. I am not here to argue the point. I am here to say that I believe in miracles, because two such phenomenons have happened during my life time. Yes, I am the recipient of two blessed events and I shout it out right here loud and clear one of those miracles happened to me in the fall of 1986. Paula, my first daughter searched me out and called me.

Within two days I was in the Little Rock Airport waiting to meet her. There is no mortal way to describe what I was feeling as I sat there scanning every young woman that passed by, not knowing if I would recognize her or not. Sure, I could say I was super-excited and there is any number of adjectives I could use to call attention to my feeling, but none of them can possibly express what I was actually feeling. The best way to put it is that I felt like I had taken a near overdose of meth and was just barely holding on to myself.

A beautiful young woman came into my view wearing the uniform of TWA flight attendants, which was what Paula was at the time. She was also scanning the people around her, as though looking for someone, and in my heart I knew it was Paula. I crossed my left leg over the other one and lay my left arm on top of it, giving anyone who walked by a good viewing of the tattoo on my forearm which read "Paula." I saw her eyes go down to the tattoo and she took a tentative step toward me and within seconds I was on my feet and we were hugging each other for the very first time in our lives.

I do not understand how my thumping heart managed to stay inside my chest. We stood there, awkwardly I must admit, and talked for a few minutes before leaving the airport. We didn't go far, just a short distance to a lounge, which I think was named "The Airport Lounge." You could look out the window and see planes landing and taking off. It was there that I more or less lost it. The full impact of what was taking place hit me so hard I am surprised my heart did not stop, but I dealt with it in another way.

I wept.

More than once did the tears fall unabashedly down my face. I tried not to, but when I realized these tears of happiness and regret were coming out of their own accord, I went with it. I was happy, very happy that Paula had found a way to look me up, not knowing what she would find. She wanted to know who her father was and she had questions, Paula had many questions there at that lounge and over the next few years. I felt great anguish and regret the same time I was feeling such happiness, because of the fact that I was never a father to her. Our past has a way of bringing us down to her knees from time to time, and this was my time.

We stayed in the lounge for an hour or two until Paula had to leave and catch a plane back to St. Louis where she lived. I saw her off in a state of unbelievable elation that I had had this time with her. After she boarded the plane I drove back to Taylor with such euphoria I could hardly contain it. It was a few short weeks later than I found out from her mother than she had lost her job and had checked into a "treatment" center for her addiction for cocaine. This horrifying news caused me to sit down at the dinette in the kitchen and write a short story called "A Fairie Tale."

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742