Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. C.S. Lewis
The old-fashioned floor grates were a necessity in the early part of the twentieth century when our old North Minneapolis house was heated by a woodstove in the basement. The stove went away, but the grates remained—one on the main level and one on the floor above—bringing lots of questions from adult guests and endless hours of play for children who, when left to their own devices, would remove the grate on the second level and stick their heads—or dangle a leg—through to the floor below. Those floor grates were built-in monitors in the early days; I could fold laundry in the basement and hear a crying baby two floors above me like she was in the next room.
With all the charm of an old house, however, there were things I didn’t want to know—like what lurked inside the walls. A winged creature stuck behind the plaster flapped until one day the walls fell silent. We later found the bird’s body—fully decomposed—when we opened the little trapdoor on the base of the chimney in our basement. But what I really didn’t want to know about was the electrical wiring hidden behind the walls, done by too many homeowners over more than ninety years.
We had so many power outages in the first couple of years in the house that I asked for a discount on our electric bill a few times and got it. Some of those blackouts affected the neighborhood, some just us. Husband seemed to be away on work travel when those happened, but I was prepared with candles, flashlights stowed around the house, and some foods I could whip up without power.
Husband was on an international trip the day the outlets in the kitchen started snapping. When they began reeking of burned plastic and the breaker blew, I got worried. I dialed Husband’s friend.
“You’ll be fine. That’s what breaker boxes are for,” he said, “to trip the circuits before your house burns down.”
I don’t recall the ending to The Tale of the Stinking Outlets, but the problem stopped with or without our intervention. Later, during some home renovation, Husband learned the mysteries of the breaker box.
“What went off now?” he hollered from the basement. “I just flipped a breaker.”
“The outlet in the bathroom and the light in the guest room,” I yelled back. “Oh, and the ceiling fan in the living room.”
In the early days, our furnace was as reliable as our breaker box was understandable, and I soon realized I could handle the darkness more than I could tolerate the cold. Our service plan through the gas company was solid, though, and a technician usually came to our house within hours. Especially in the dead of winter like that day in January years ago.
“We don’t have the part you need, but we just ordered it,” the repair guy said. “It’s Saturday, though, so it won’t be here until Monday. ‘Course, no deliveries on Sunday.”
“It’s fifty degrees in here,” I said.
“We’ll get you some loaner space heaters.”
The heaters didn’t raise the temperature, but if we stood a certain distance away, we could warm ourselves without burning our coats. Overnight, the temperature in the house dropped. In our many layers, we were sausages sharing a family bed that night.
Sunday seemed endless. We had to get through to Monday when the part would arrive. We lived in outdoor winter clothing. I even pulled on two stocking caps. We drove to a restaurant to thaw ourselves and returned home to snuggle in bed and watch movies.
Sunday evening, a neighbor picked up our girls for an event. I stood at the door and waved goodbye.
“Hey, you’ve got a package there,” he called to me before he climbed into his minivan.
A package from the gas company sat on the front steps: the furnace part slated for delivery by USPS on Monday. A miracle in a little cardboard box.
With gloved fingers, I dialed the familiar phone number. A technician came out, and our heat was restored within the hour.
Husband was away the day the garage across the alley ignited. The girls and I watched the inferno from our back door.
“Wow,” Flicka said in a whisper.
“Yeah,” I said. “Look at those firemen go.”
Another time, from the kitchen window I saw a small circle of flames licking up from the middle of the alley. I investigated. A single book was ablaze. I hustled back to the house and called our neighbor Glenda.
“I could probably put it out,” I said, “but do you think I should call 911?”
“Maybe,” she said. “It might be something explosive.”
Minutes later, a fire truck pulled into our alley. A firefighter jumped out of the cab and strode over to the burning book. He stomped out the flames with his big boot.
Thinking back, I now see our misadventures as miracles. And I see God. And like those parents in ancient times telling their children stories about the column of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, about their dry passage through roaring waters, and about food falling from the sky when they were starving, I told my little girls about the electrical dangers that amounted to only a bad smell, about the impossible provision of a furnace part one Sunday night, and about the alley fires that didn’t touch us.
And I still tell the stories—even to my grown girls now—so on the days of fears and fires, we can all remember.
