Miracles Happen

Miracles Happen; Sometimes By Chance, Sometimes By Design

Dan Gollub

He decided to attend a group therapy session at a church. He’d never done it before, but he was at a major crossroads in his life and it would be helpful to express his views and feelings. Everyone in the group was a stranger. He was glad about that. He didn’t want anyone he knew to feel pity for him. When it was his turn to speak, he said, “My name is Carl Etherbridge. It’s an unusual name, and for more reasons than that some of the high school kids bullied me. That doesn’t matter now. The future is all that matters. My future had looked bright and promising. It still does, but less immediately so. I’m in my third year of college. I’m majoring in biology. I have dreams of the great research projects I will carry out. For example, there must be some way of improving the epigenetic status of people who have been through a lot of suffering. But I’m going to have to drop out of school after this semester to work at least two jobs in order to build up my savings. My great future will be deferred.” How did they feel about his fervent belief in his research capabilities? He wondered if he was blushing. “I promise you I will stay on the straight and narrow even when I’m not in school. I won’t do anything which might diminish my brain’s functioning. I don’t use recreational drugs. Nor do I use alcohol. I sometimes attend the Wild Tree Corral nightclub on Saturday nights, and I order a glass or two of tomato juice there. I’m glad to be around people then, and sometimes one of the women there will accept my invitation to dance. If I were in a relationship, I would treat that woman well. She’d have to accept my need to spend long hours studying, and I’d try to make it up to her as best I could. Thanks for listening to me.”

People made polite comments. They wished him well. He noticed a man with grizzled hair was looking at him intently. Then that man shifted his gaze elsewhere. The group continued. Carl listened to others, and tried to make helpful comments when he could. The group ended. He went home. He had the surprising thought while falling asleep that he thought he had problems but in actuality he didn’t. Evidently being in the group session had done him some good.

Five days later a package arrived for him in the mail. The package didn’t have a return address. Inside was a little black book. He opened it. The pages were blank. A typed note had been inserted between the cover and the first page. “Please record your biology progress in this book. $20,000 has been deposited to your bank account for you to continue to go to school. When the time comes, pay it forward. Sealskin.”

Stunned, he called his bank. Yes, that amount had been added to his account. “Thank you so much,” he told the person he spoke with. But that wasn’t whom he wanted to thank.

How reality can change so much so suddenly! His mind kept coming back to that in the weeks that followed. He made entries in the black book, of course. He’d never been skilled at calligraphy but he tried to make those entries as visually pleasing as possible. Would his benefactor ever surface and want to see that book? He wrote on one occasion, “Glycolysis has such intricate pathways.” On another day he wrote, “Photosynthesis has secrets which must be unraveled.” He thought about the gift he’d received. Of course he’d pay that good deed forward if he ever got the chance. But how, and when, and in what way?

Sealskin. Who are you, sealskin?

He had money now. He still needed to be frugal, but not quite as frugal as before. He bought a guitar. It was enjoyable to practice it in the evening after he’d finished his homework. His fingers didn’t cooperate, though, or at least not as much as he wanted. “If I had a girlfriend,” he thought, “I could report to her the progress I was making.”

He continued to make entries in the black book. One evening he opened it and, on a new page, discovered a faintly reproduced biochemical map of mitochondrial pathways. He’d thought all the pages were blank, but he’d been mistaken. He stared at that map. Mitochondria, he knew, were involved in cellular energy production. He’d also learned that flawed mitochondria contribute to the aging process. He felt an indefinable excitement.

Months passed. He started the new semester. He lost himself so thoroughly in the biology topics that it was almost a jolt when a classroom lecture or seminar ended and he had to come back to his usual reality, even though that reality was without any significant problems.

On a Saturday evening he realized he’d been lonely. He hadn’t gone to the Wild Tree Corral for several weeks. He went to the nightclub, ordered a tomato juice, and sat at a table. It was crowded. Women at nearby tables had partners. He’d gotten halfway through the tomato juice when a woman came to his table. “Would you like to dance?” she asked him.

She wasn’t beautiful, except she was. She appeared to be about his age. She had glossy dark hair and, if her face was plain, her eyes were lovely. Something about her face triggered an elusive stirring within him. Have I seen her before? Somehow she looks familiar. His thoughts didn’t get in the way of responding immediately to her question. “Of course,” he said. He rose and they went to the dance floor.

The music was slow. They began dancing at a formal distance from each other, but before the music had ended she was nestled close to him. Her eyes were warm, or was that warmth instead in his brain? She said, “Could we talk a while?”

At his table, she looked at him intensely for a second. She said, “Would you please tell me about yourself?”

“I’ll be graduating in biology in two more semesters. It seemed so right to dance with you. The world has surprises. I didn’t think I’d be able to go to school this semester, but a miracle happened. I think people should treat each other kindly. We should also be kind to ourselves. For me, that includes not doing anything wrong which could get in the way of my future. I want to be a keystone species—that’s an ecology term—except I’m an individual rather than a species. I want to have an extremely high impact on my ecosystem. My ecosystem is the entire world. I would be so happy to be in a relationship with you. Would you like to tell me about yourself?”

“I will, but first I have a question to ask you, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. Go ahead.”

“Will you marry me?”

He looked at her closely. She’d turned away, as if dreading his answer. The dim lighting in the nightclub seemed to cast a colorless pall across her face. He didn’t reply. Seconds passed. Her face contorted, as if she were wrestling with some inner impulse. Then her tension subsided. She seemed at peace while waiting for him to reply.

“Yes,” he said.

She smiled. She cried. She looked at him, tears still in her eyes. “I’m glad I didn’t use the code word. Nor would I have used it.”

He didn’t understand. “Code word?”

“Sealskin.”