THE GESTURE OF A DAILY MIRACLE

It was a quiet Monday afternoon, around 3’oclock. I was on my way to pick up a takeaway. I thought about binge watching some series, in hopes to declutter the piles of information gathered in my foggy brain. As I crossed the road, a man ran past me. He ran so fast, you’d think there were dogs chasing after him. It made me look around. The kind of alertness that an annoying alarm would make you feel in the morning. The only thing brought to my attention was an old lady in a bright yellow raincoat. She walked a few meters behind me, though it looked she would be incapable of chasing anyone. I scanned one-eighty to inspect the situation further, only to see the man turn around the corner and disappear. In a split second I noticed that something fell out of his pocket. Assuming it's a wallet, I sprung towards it and picked it up. Although it wasn’t a wallet but a little black book, I was very determined to return it to its rightful owner. Checking every shop on the street, I slowly realised that something mysterious was going on... The man was nowhere to be found.

After running around tirelessly, I decided to sit down. There's a little patch of green where people that work in the shops would go to have lunch, if they wanted to relax. I opened the book to see if there were any clues to the owner's details of contact or such. Instead I found these drawings that I thought were strange. Not something drawn by an artist. Just ordinary objects; food, cars, houses, even hair. Yes. Hair. Luscious, long hair. But why would someone draw a wig? And why are all these random drawings cramped into this little book? There are symbols on the front and last page that are foreign to my sights. I’d go as far as to say they looked foreign to this planet…

No way! I had thought to myself There is no way this could ever happen!

There wouldn’t be any harm if I drew in it and tested it out though, right? I made sure that no one was watching me. Although, no one would have a clue what I was up to, I still felt like a lunatic. How ridiculous can this get? But I guess I was in need of some silliness in my life. I thought of a sum and wrote down the first thing that came into my head on the paper. $20,000. The writing soaked into the paper and disappeared, then came back as a chest. Astounded, my breath left me for a second. I was mesmerised by what just happened in front of my very eyes. Almost instantly, I was blinded by a reflection of what appeared to be a wooden chest with some silver engravings. It sat under the young willow tree, a few meters away from me. The engravings are the same symbols as in the book, I observed. At this point I was done questioning things. In a rush to get it to open, it became obvious to me that it was locked. I looked around again, this time to make sure that I wasn't in a dream world. The same lady in the yellow raincoat was walking down the road. A key hung on a rope from her tiny, fragile wrist. Is this a part of the manifestation? I asked myself.

I slowly approached the lady, as she didn't seem to be in a rush, and blurted out;

“It looks like a very interesting key you have there.”

Not realising how weird it would sound to someone completely oblivious to what was going on, after all, it could have very well been the key to her front door, I frantically tried to clarify myself by saying,

“You shouldn’t be carrying a key to your door... Out in the open like that.”

In spite of my worries the lady kindly informed me of the situation. She began to tell me what seemed to be her life story at first, in spite of that, I still listened carefully. Her son was very ill, and she’s the only one looking after him, she told me. They were in debt of $20,000 for a mortgage. She was unable to work and neither was her son, and they had no other family. The only thing that gave her a sense of control and kept her afloat was collecting metal bits for scrap, whenever she had a chance to walk outside, in hopes of gathering the sum before the inevitable happened. Today, the only thing she had found was this key. Nevertheless, it made her quite happy. She believed the key to be made of silver.

As I stood and received all of this information, I thought, maybe, I wasn’t the one who was supposed to pick up that book. She was… She even found the key! I was never in as much need as I heard this person to be. Somehow, it still ended up being brought right to her, coincidentally... Hand over the chest to whom it belongs to, I heard myself say in my head. That’s what I was going to do, but first I had to explain the reason why I approached her. Her eyes began to fill with joy and started to cry, as she understood what was about to happen. She embraced me. It was a moment where it felt like the universe held us still. After she unlocked the chest and transferred the money to her bag, we parted our ways. Both with lightness in our hearts. I went home without the food and mulled over what happened in my mind. It also appeared that the book was lost at some point before or after I approached the old lady named Ani. As on my arrival home, I couldn’t find it after scanning all of my pockets. Amazed at how things play out in our lives, I was still trying to figure out where I fit into this miraculous story.

The morning after was different than any other I experienced before. The sun was shining bright and it woke me up. It felt like… anything could happen today.