
Listen When Life Is Sending You Messages
Before the closing on the dream house we were selling because of financial difficulties, I floated through the perfunctory motions of life, getting done what needed to be done. Having my teeth cleaned was the last thing on my mind, but I’d been having dreams that my teeth were crumbling and falling out at inopportune moments, so I fit in a dentist appointment.
Walking into the office, I was greeted by the receptionist. Sitting next to her was a petite elderly woman with fiery red hair and brilliant blue eyes. Her presence was electric, and she was unfazed by my irritable, self-absorbed state. Leaning over to the receptionist as if sharing a special secret, she complimented my “lovely” blouse. Looking down at my thermal, I wondered whether I had slept in it or managed to change before racing out of the house. I gave a zany, confused smile and sat down to take the precious time to read.
She walked around the desk to sit next to me. “I shuppose I should let her do her work,” she whistled, leaning in to create an intimacy I couldn’t ignore. “The Doc’sh cleaning my teeth,” she continued. Once again I looked at her in confusion, until she smiled a toothless smile, revealing metal posts set into her gums to hold her dentures. “I have implantsh,” she explained. “You shee, I had sheven children with an Irishh husband who liked to use his fishts. Broke my jaw and my face more times than I can remember, sho my bones are weak. When he got hit on the head by that tree yearsh ago, I figured he was hard-headed enough to pershevere, but it killed him.” And with that she let out a hefty chuckle at the story she had been telling since the birth of her last child, born soon after her husband died. I wondered if she had taken the tree and replanted it in her garden.
As I walked away, I smiled at the little messages being thrown down at me like lightning bolts:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — attributed to Albert Einstein
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” — attributed to Dr. Seuss
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” — Mae West





































































