Miracles in the New Year

On New Year’s Day, my friend and I decided to go to a diner for a late breakfast. The day was sunny, bright and cold, with freezing gusts of wind. The first place we tried was mobbed with shoulder-to-shoulder people waiting in the foyer for a table.

“I know another diner,” Loretta said. “We’ll try there.”

People stood in line there as well, but it wasn’t as crowded, so we decided to wait. After we were seated and ordered, we began chatting about our lives.

What was next for us?

Loretta had recently retired from a lifelong career as a speech therapist at the local hospital, and I, who retired as a journalist when I was 62, had been caring for my father for the last six years. He had died in June and I felt adrift. As my friend did.

Both spiritual and praying people, we talked about how we might be of service and make the best use of our time — and feel connected to others in some way.

Waitresses bustled by balancing trays, the room boisterous with conversations and clattering of plates. Without warning, a boy appeared at our table, surprising us, perhaps 9 years old, dark hair, with a wide, beguiling smile. 

“Excuse me,” he said, his voice a tad mischievous. “I’m in need of a speech therapist.”

Loretta’s face brightened like the sun as she hugged the boy.

“Is your father here? Your mother?”

He nodded and pointed to a woman in a wheelchair, and a man standing next to her, both waiting for a table in a long line at the front of the diner.

*****

I first met Loretta at the hospital six years ago when my father had his stroke. She was feeding the patient in the bed next to dad’s. I watched as she lovingly tended to him, helping him to swallow and eat.

I had spent days and nights for months at the hospital and had come to know the staff. Sadly, many seemed callous. Few seemed to care as Loretta did.

Eventually, she became dad’s speech therapist, helping him to speak again.

The stroke had scrambled his brain so he had aphasia, unable to find the right words. Twice a week for months and for follow-up visits, I would trudge dad in the wheelchair to her small office.

There, she would encourage dad to speak, ask him questions about the time, the day, our family. She would say the Our Father with dad or the Hail Mary, because she knew these prayers were part of dad’s memory and life. She knew he could speak those prayers.

Slowly, and I’m not sure how, we stayed in touch. We kept bumping into each other at the hospital, at the oddest places. The bathroom. Outside on a bench. We became friends. Dad died. We remained friends.

*****

Loretta sent a wave to a handsome man standing by the register, among the thick line of people waiting. He returned the wave with a smile.

“Let me tell you the story,” she began. “That man came to me when he was 15 because he had had a stroke. After that, he had many mini-strokes. He couldn’t speak. I suggested a program that might help him outside of the hospital.”

There, she continued, he met a young and beautiful speech therapist in a wheelchair who helped him to speak again.

“She’s in a wheelchair? And a speech therapist?”

Loretta nodded. “I eventually hired her for the hospital. And that was their son who just came to the table. Happy and well.”

******

The waitress came and cleared our table and we asked for the bill.

“Oh, it’s been paid for,” she said with a smile. “A secret Santa.”

We were shocked and Loretta asked if it had been the couple at the other table, the one with the woman in the wheelchair and the small boy.

“I’m not supposed to tell you, but yes. That really touched me because I’ve been having a hard time,” she said.

My friend and I listened as she shared that her 25-year-old husband had been sick for some time, requiring home care. And she had just had a baby, a five-month old.

She beamed. “Can I show you her pictures?”

We oohed and aahed at the precious gift of this chubby-cheeked infant. We both asked her husband’s name so we could pray for him. 

“My baby brings me such joy,” she said. “So much joy.”

****

As we left the restaurant, I was awestruck by the miracles and grace I had just witnessed. I realized that sometimes, when we feel God is absent, the Divine is always working behind the scenes, connecting the dots.

That the Supreme Force of Love always has us in the right place at the right time.

For me to meet Loretta as a result of dad’s stroke.

For us to leave one diner to go to another so we could meet the man my friend had so lovingly helped.

For this man, now alive and well, meeting his wife, a speech therapist who helped him to speak again. For them to now have a son, even though she is in a wheelchair.

For them to thank Loretta for how much she had helped them by paying for our breakfast.

To meet our waitress, a young woman, who had been touched by this couple’s thoughtful gesture. Who, in turn, shared with us her struggles with a sick husband and her joy at a new child.

*****

I felt the connection of it all. And it felt part of some Divine tapestry that has been woven since the beginning of time, a tapestry still being stitched together.

God had a plan, even if I couldn’t see it. Had a plan that despite my wrong turns and detours was always to my good — to our good.

We got in the car and I felt a rush of certainty that we are always exactly where we are meant to be, even if the questions haunt us at night, the questions we had asked while eating: What do we do with our lives?

Perhaps this was it. Now. Staying open to the moment.

On the first day of the New Year, an explosion of grace filled my heart. Miracles. Joy