So watch out, the initial situation was as follows: one of our beloved tea chests has extremely sharp edges, on which we have scratched our thighs or forearms several times in passing. The day today passed quietly. I had some time to scurry. So I came up with a plan, namely to fit soft plastic edge protectors and fight the battle against the sharp corners made of plywood. Because the glued version of the corner protection did not hold, I made short work of it and used hammer and nails for it. And when Minne saw this, he naturally wanted to play Bob the Builder as well.
In the boys' nursery – I don't know if you know this – a long, thick wooden beam runs directly above the door and descends in height all the way down the wall to the windows and Minnie's desk respectively. There the bar is so low that you can sink a few short irons into it – for self-made works of art, for example.
So Minne plods along, equipped with the weapons of a home handyman, and taps away for all it's worth.
The whole time I hear this dull, regular throbbing and I'm almost inclined to go in and say "That's enough now!!" To shout – it suddenly does a MORDS blow. Then: Silence. Frightening silence. Three seconds, four seconds, five seconds.
I run into the room: "Minne? Minne? Everything is okay?"
My gaze falls on an angel trophy weighing about four kilograms, which lies directly on the threshold of the door and has left a centimeter-deep notch in the hard parquet floor.
"There… Now we have had quite a bit of luck."I mutter in a daze as I take the milk carton-sized casting in my hands. I look up. Way up. The beam hangs easily two and a half meters above the ground. If you drop something from there… With this weight…
Minne finishes formulating my thoughts with wide-open eyes: "Yes, Mama. Now imagine that the bean would have been sitting there!"
My heart is pounding. Minne is right: this is exactly the place where the bean usually lingers for minutes and shifts the magnetically attached photos in the door frame.
Often she just sits there and does nothing but keep an eye on two rooms at the same time. But the bean crawled to me in the kitchen a few moments ago. For once. Because otherwise she always hangs around close to Minnesota. Always. Actually.
Bloody scenes play out in front of my inner eye: this thing, nevertheless an angel – from this height – on its head? I can't help thinking of the experiment of the watermelon in the bicycle helmet, which has so often shown impressively how fragile one's own head is.
Or Minnes.
Or my husband's.
Or my.
Or at all.
For any of us this could have been extremely, extremely, extremely painful, judging by the depth of the indentation (I mean: it's really a hard wooden floor) maybe even much, much worse. (Keyword: Fontanelle.)
Go through the door two seconds earlier- Stand two meters to the left.
Something!
Not to think.
The hospital would have been ours for sure – if not more. Minnes hammer knocking set the whole beam swinging. Finally brought down the heaviest of the sculptures strung up there. I would never have seen that coming. I was sure until then, no: more than sure, that nothing and nobody would get any of those heavy dust catchers down from up there. I mean: that's exactly why they stood up there. So that they don't fall on anyone's feet, you know?
When I think about what a shitload of luck we had today, what perfect timing that was, how that could have turned out – God.
I know: this probably sounds completely exaggerated to outsiders, maybe even a bit hysterical – but it really kept me busy all day: how much can happen, how much can change, from one second to the other. Even out of situations that one has by no means negligently created, for which one may not even be able to do anything, and if so, then only in the very most distant.
I mean: nobody drove a car here today, typing text messages, or hung themselves drunk over the balcony railing. And still it was just HAARSCHARF.
So the saying: "Our guardian angel did a bang-up job today" somehow takes on a completely different meaning.
In the late afternoon we all wanted to go out with the bikes again. Dilly-dallying here, dilly-dallying there, you know how it is – and in the end it was again much later than planned and just as we were about to leave the house with helmets on our heads and shoes on our feet, a big thunderstorm came up, heavy rain pelted against the windows and within a few moments the sky darkened so much that only a few flashes of lightning illuminated it – accompanied by a loud roll of thunder. And I just thought: Hah! Again such a perfect timing! Then, nevertheless, hot tub and pizza service. (At least no one can drop something on their head, mumble mumble.)
Is it actually clear to me what this means?
I don't want to get into this discussion of fate or coincidence or destiny or faith. None of this interests me.
But I want to know: when did you get lucky in life? When did you have such like us today? When could the timing not have been better? Everything counts, even the green wave on the way to the job interview or… Yes, or what?? Take heart!
Hey girls, the truth is that life is full of "lucky breaks"!" Moments, full of "ifs, ands and buts" that go smoothly, and full of guardian angel stories! Life is' beautiful. Small and large.