Finding Miracles

This picture has nothing to do with this post but that's the mood I'm in this morning

Yesterday I walked Moll near Mawnan Smith, down to the sea. The sea was flat calm, cobalt blue, the sky as bright as a summer's day in our childhood memories. No wind ruffled the trees and bluebells poked their young, inquisitive heads through the ground as we walked along.

At the bottom of the woods, I started walking up Rosemullion Head, where the shadows were so clear they looked as if they'd been carved.

"Hello!" said a voice. "I bet you don't remember me."

I did. She was someone who had belonged to a writing group I went to years ago. She used to live with her mother but she died and she is now living in "lodgings" (a term not often used nowadays) nearby. She was walking two portly dogs, and stopped to question me on what I was doing.

I'd just finished transcribing an interview from that morning and told her that I was writing more journalism nowadays.

"Oh," she said. "You are lucky. I'm still waiting for my miracle."

My heart sank. But I had to say something. "Sometimes you have to go and get your miracle," I said. "I've found it's all about perseverance."

I didn't add that I also need determination, dedication, a sense of humour, sensitivity, empathy, the ability to listen and the need to pick myself up when I've been kicked in the teeth. Which is often.

She smiled. "Oh well," she said. "Perhaps my miracle will come along one day." And she called to her dogs.

Her dogs ignored her much as I fear her miracle might.