Miracle 1 – My First Major Miracle That Changed Everything I Thought I Knew

Miracles are Alive and Well and Much Smarter Than Me

“Not again! WHAT is going on?”

Screeching to the curb, I blast open the door, and in my platform shoes, mini skirt, and huge strides, I storm around the front of the car to drop and crawl on my thinly stockinged knees in the near-dark, fingers fumbling as they navigate their way around every inch of the sticky, city-dirt covered passenger side front tire.

“Nothing! It’s absolutely NOTHING,” I rant to my closest girlfriend who is hanging halfway out of the rolled down car window to watch.

It all seemed so ridiculous. And futile. Definitely futile. What could all of those people be pointing at? I straighten up and rub the top layer of dirt from my grimy hands on the inside hem of my skirt and scurry back to resume our evening. This was the third time we had stopped for this very same reason, and we couldn’t figure out why the same bizarre thing kept happening.

We were barely 21 years old and we were nightclub hopping in Manhattan, simply one more night amidst many of the same. My friend shakes her head and pops back into the car. I join her and in a moment we screech down East 10^th Street and then make a right, darting through the never-ending cascade of taxis, buses, bicycles and pedestrians, all hustling towards downtown on a crowded Saturday night. Neither of us could figure out why three separate groups of people, out of nowhere, stopped long enough to point at the passenger side front tire or somewhere in that general vicinity of my little white car.

The first time it happened we both didn’t know what to think except that the group of people must have been pointing at something else, but we looked around the front of the car and the tire anyway. Nothing seemed wrong or out of the ordinary. When the second group, including two people with arms swaying towards the same vicinity of the vehicle did almost the same thing as I maneuvered the car into a parking spot not too far from a streetlamp, I made sure I took a closer look. Still I didn’t find anything and I walked around the car twice. It all looked fine, and Genevieve and I were baffled.

En route to our next destination we crossed paths with a woman sporting a thick ponytail and no make up, in the passenger seat of car, inching past us in cross traffic through a jammed intersection. Hanging a bit out the window of her vehicle, she motions towards the same tire yet again, and attempts to tell us something, nodding and pointing. I roll down the window as she careens off in the distance when her driver finds a break in the traffic and abruptly steps on the gas.

“OK, I give up,” I sigh to Genevieve.

She shakes her head and wearily shrugs. As soon as our light is green, I commandeer towards a quiet spot and pull over, because now I believe that just perhaps, I missed whatever it was she and the others were trying to show us, hidden in some imagined shadow during the last two times I looked. This time I crawl around on my knees and touch every inch of the dirty tire I can wrap my twisted wrists around. Still there was nothing. I was sure of it.

We knew New York was weird, and we had plenty of stories to prove it. There is a reason New Yorkers seem jaded, and that is because they know anything at all can happen at any given time, because it usually does. No one gets riled up, and instead we simply move along. There is just too much going on all over the place, and if you allow it, the city will suck you in consuming your time, energy, and sometimes your heart. Even though we were of barely legal age, we were no different, so we simply passed it off as the weirdness of just another night in Manhattan, and spent the rest of the night dancing to deep house and bass music, then changing neighborhoods to soak up the punk and rock-and-roll bands at some of our favorite haunts. The nightclubs closed at 4 am and after a late-night snack at a corner diner, sunlight was arriving soon. Back in the car, I dropped Genevieve off at her Upper East Side apartment and headed down the avenues, this time to cross the 59^th Street Bridge into Queens where I shared an apartment with three other girls.

The streets weren’t quite deserted but New York was finally slowing down, and stillness and peace began to descend through the avenues. There were other cars on the road but traffic was no longer bumper-to-bumper like it had been throughout the majority of the city, just a little earlier. Buses stopped running and there were only a few cabs left, busily scuttling the last late-night stragglers home. Cruising to the red light, I pause and wait in queue with other vehicles to turn left onto the bridge.

Suddenly a man is standing outside of my window, very close. This is nothing new, only this time I can’t imagine how he landed here, seemingly materializing out of thin air. Usually you can see them coming, trudging car to car down the line with a dirty bucket of muck, trying to bully its contents onto the windshield in exchange for a dollar while we all silently count the seconds anticipating release with that next green light.

Before I am willing to tilt my head, though it’s likely I won’t, I scope him out from the corner of my eye. He has a round face and dark mustache and a bit of a bowl haircut, and is wearing a greasy blue mechanic’s uniform. I know very well not to open the window but a crack if at all, yet he didn’t look like the usual transient asking for money, or homeless person looking for a meal, and he is diligently trying to tell me something as I continue to ignore him.

But… yet… there is something about him that is different from every other person who appear by the dozens, every single day at my car window or while I’m walking down the street, seeking a handout or trying to involve little ol’ me in their next scam of the day. I think I can (maybe) trust him because he is pretty calm and mostly just standing there trying to talk to me, which is 180 degrees opposite of most people knocking on my window. The more I ignore him, the more I convince myself he is in a different category than the others who approach my car or chase me down the street for whatever it is they want, which happens much more than you may imagine.

Ok, maybe I’ll hear him out. I crack the window just a bit.

“Hey. That’s my place over there.”

He points diagonally across the intersection to a lit driveway in the first floor of a tall building that resembles any other indoor parking lot, except I can see it’s some kind of gas station or auto shop.

“I’m just trying to warn you. You have a huge nail sticking out of your passenger tire.”

He motions towards my front right tire which of course I can’t see in any of my mirrors, but I don’t actually think of how important that information is at this moment, only that I can’t see it. Instead I freeze.

“I saw it when I was crossing the street.”

Crossing the street? Where – when – did he cross the street? How did I miss him?

“You know, you are NEVER going to make it across the bridge without a blow out. I can fix that for you pretty quickly in my shop.”

I don’t know what to think now. My passenger side front tire? No way. Not again! There is part of me that completely believes him. Because there is something I can’t figure out about him that I trust. Because he is a mechanic. Because it’s my same damn tire. Again! Because maybe someone finally has my best interest at heart, and he’s not trying to scam me. Because he is the fourth person to ‘tell’ me that something is wrong with that tire. And likely, because it is after 4 in the morning and I am winding down, so my normal defenses are down, and New York is finally peaceful, and I’m simply tired of being told there is something wrong with my car.

“My front tire? What? When?” I think I could have picked up a nail anywhere, but where? I didn’t hit any potholes. Did someone implant it while we were in the clubs? Or the diner? That could be possible too….

“Yeah, you know you’re not going to get very far like that! It’s really big!”

He says more but I’m not listening. I’m sure he’s right. If I picked up a big nail it could go at any moment… and the surface on the bridge is SO bad that it could easily blow out if I hit a pothole… How would they even get a tow truck to me with traffic piled all the way back into the city? And who would bother me, or try to take advantage of a literally helpless young girl while I waited? Putting myself in that situation was definitely not an acceptable one.

“OK”, I nod, and roll up the window, and point at his shop.

He steps back, as the light turns green. And then I hover. It’s barely a millisecond of a pause that something internal happens, after I have full intention to maneuver across the lanes into the ground floor of the building, into his auto shop, instead of simply turning left onto the bridge to go home with my potentially deadly tire.

In that smidgeon of my hesitation, deep bodily chills set in and a ripple of electricity cascades down my spine, past my shoulders into the small of my back. My mind descends into chaos. I remember that just a couple of hours earlier I got out of the car and after rubbing my hands allover the same tire, I found nothing. I doubt myself and wonder if I missed it. But how could I? He said HUGE nail. Maybe it got embedded since I checked. What if the three prior incidents were warnings for something really bad, that was about to happen to my car, and that this stranger is just the fourth and final before disaster, and I bargain with myself. I remember again, that on my hands and knees I checked the entire surface of the tire. Yet I really could have picked up a nail in the past couple of hours too. I could have been given warnings all night that if I didn’t do something my car would crash with a blow out to dire circumstances, and this man was simply my next and final warning. Or he could be a total scam like every other one that most days in New York City gift to me. But why the same tire, again? NO. Wait. Shut up! STOP. I checked the tire. It was fine. My tire is fine. I felt it MYSELF.

Chills are now running through every inch of my body as the hairs on my neck begin to rise, and instantaneously a last minute gut decision kicks in. Instead of pulling into the driveway towards which I have just begun to maneuver, I step on the gas to careen left back into traffic, and in seconds I’m on the ramp to the bridge with a few cars behind me that I just cut off honking repeatedly, but I barely hear them. In my rear view mirror I see the man in the mechanic uniform who had been following me from afar, throw up his hands. Very slowly I begin to traverse the long metal bridge full of potholes, praying and hoping and doing everything I can think of in my power not to dislodge the nail.

“Please please please please please, let me make it all the way across,” I chant.

Cars behind me are honking louder and I could be going 5 miles per hour but I’m not really sure, and I absolutely don’t care because I am shaking now, and I’m trying to avoid a disaster crash with my forthcoming blow out because maybe he was right. I think that the mechanic is as surprised as I am that at that last moment I didn’t pull into that building.

My car is shaking now too, bouncing on the deeply puckered surface and I am nearly convulsing, trying to keep the steering wheel straight as I anticipate whatever absolutely horrible thing is about to happen when my tire hits the next pothole or simply gives way in the middle of the two-lane traffic. I have to be in control of the steering wheel when the tire gives out because I could easily hit the metal wall or crash into another car that I’m sure is there, but don’t really see in my focused trance of survival. Is it going to be a big bang? Or maybe the air in the tire will melt down to empty and I’ll just have a crumpled flat. I pray that I can ride on the rim to the other side of the bridge. Maybe I won’t get hurt or my car won’t get ruined if I crash going this slow. Maybe that same mechanic will be called with his tow truck to rescue my broken car. I think that if it happens, at least the police will come too, because by now, somewhere in the back of my mind it is slipping in that just maybe, this girl who has been so very street smart up to this so very long moment, could have been scammed by a stranger.

After what feels like thirty minutes though more likely seven, or maybe even five, I find myself almost across the bridge without disaster, and I’m amazed and in awe, and most of my body is still shaking, but a little less so. Instead of going twenty miles an hour the rest of the way home not knowing the fate of my tire, I pull a sharp right and guide the car towards a deserted spot under the bridge. I can call a tow truck from there if I could figure out whom I could trust and where to find a phone. If I can sit in my locked car and wait for the sun to come up and people to awaken, that would be even better. Or, if I wait even longer, maybe I can find a way to get in touch with one of my sleeping roommates.

No one seems to be around, but I scan the shadows for hoodlums and murderers and vagrants camouflaged amidst the dirty walls and supports while seeking refuge for their crack and methamphetamine escape for the night. I slow down to an absolute crawl because I’m still panicked about my fragile tire against the even bumpier cobblestone beneath the bridge, but I also take what is possibly my first full breath again, having made it this far without disaster. I pull my car over, but not too close to the curb as to dislodge the nail, and scan the area one more time. I don’t see any pay phones. Dawn is beginning to break with lavender skies in the far horizon, barely illuminating the graffiti under the bridge and the ancient gray cobblestone road below me. I am a bit less scared about any more impending doom simply because I’ve made it this far.

Though still physically shaking and looking around me one last time, I set my keys in my hand as a precautionary weapon, and I open the car door. Once again I make my way to the passenger side. Not seeing a nail lodged in the tire but being fully aware that in my current state of duress this could be a completely plausible side-effect, I fall down on my knees and rub my left hand around the tire, mimicking almost exactly what I did hours earlier. Nothing. My tire was fine. I find absolutely nothing, all over again. I crumple against the dirty ground into a heap of relief. No nail, no flat tire, no air leaks or disruption whatsoever; just a perfectly good tire was in place, exactly as it was the last time I checked.

I barely walk back around the car with my jelly legs as it all hits me. It was a complete set-up. If I drove into that building, I would have been raped or murdered, or both. Incapable of doing much else, I sat back in my car regaining enough composure to drive the rest of the way home as my body’s shaking finally starts to subside. I think of all of the strangers that night that showed up at various places around the city, pointing at my car, or at least appearing to be pointing and my car, and playing a huge part in my story. Collectively and unknowingly, they saved my life. If it weren’t for each one them, I would have been gone for good.

I was in awe. How could that happen? How did three sets of strangers, unknown to them, save my life? And why? Why were they pointing at my car? And at that tire? What moved them to do it, especially if there was never any nail? Perhaps they were pointing at something else in the area, or doing something else instead. Regardless of how or why it all went down the way it did, both Genevieve and I were convinced by their actions, and that’s all that really mattered. Their gestures were so obvious that I actually got out of the car and checked the tire myself after multiple moments of frustration and disbelief. And it saved my life.

I had a difficult time processing and fathoming the enormity of seemingly weird and random pieces coming together to make a miracle. A bunch of strangers were animated into action, driven by whatever means to save a stranger’s life, and I had no idea how I could ever thank them, because I would never be able to recognize their faces or even their outfits if I walked past them on the street.

I was so relieved and happy to be alive, and because my adrenaline rush and subsequent effects of it in my body took a while to subside, I never thought to call the police to help others that could have become the mechanic’s victims in the future. I was just so elated not to have fallen victim to this man that it quickly became just another crazy night in New York that was very often peppered with a daily slew of predators approaching me, representative of so many young girls. When I told a police officer about it years later, he said that if I entered the building, it would have been the last anyone ever saw of the car and of me, and I may have at best and most likely, been raped, drugged and kidnapped for sex trade, and at worst raped and dead.

My New Miracle World

This was the first time I recognized a massive force operating on my behalf, for which I had no words. Something guided and orchestrated the situation with all of the strangers and my car beforehand, before a situation would arise, before I could get into grave trouble, before my life was in danger. But could miracles really work that way? The force that drove the miracle was looking, knowing, seeing ahead into to my fate to change its course. Something intelligent saw that I was for some reason, going to behave differently than I normally would have when I met a stranger in this manner, and I was likely going to trust him when he approached my car. Time was irrelevant to its power. It saw my fate long before I had any clue to my potential future. It saw his intent, what he was going to do, and that I would become his unknowing victim that night because my normal defenses were down. It helped orchestrate others to appropriate action, in response to redirect and overcome something horrible that didn’t need to happen.

The miracle arrived through actions of three different sets of people because that’s exactly what it took to bring me to appropriate action. Three was the number of times something so incredibly bizarre needed to happen, that it would grab my full attention and I would check the tire with my hands. So I would know. So I would feel it. So there was no tangible doubt left, that the tire and my car were fine. Something so odd needed to prod me enough times to pull me out of my normal habits and reactions, to do something I wouldn’t have done otherwise. And, it made it all happen without conveying any clue as to what was going on, until the very moment I needed to see.

That night I saw the immense, intelligent force that exists for each one of us, and the extent to which it is possible for it to change outcomes in our lives. This miracle didn’t just save my life; it changed it forever. I was instantly forced into a brand new realm where much of what I thought I knew about my world and the universe was questioned and challenged for truth and relevancy. All of the rules I had been taught through my recently earned science degree, as well as all of the things family, friends, and society heralded to be true, were ripe for questioning. This was the miracle that began my thirty year search to understand the reality in which we live, not the one that we were told we exist in.