Mom was in a panic.
She had looked away for an instant.
An instant.
And her toddler had disappeared.
Christine, dressed in her warm, little
woollen snowsuit had been playing happily in the front yard.
Mom had zipped into the house to check
on her new baby.
Happily, rosily asleep in his cradle.
And now, seconds later, her eldest
child was gone.
Frantically, Mom called and cast about
for her little daughter's footprints in the snow.
There!
Leading . . . toward the river.
Mom was off at a run.
A few seconds later, she was standing
on the bank.
The little tracks meandered out onto
the snow-covered ice.
To a large hole.
Mom stared at the patch of dark,
swiftly-moving water.
Her entire life crashing about her
ears.
She stepped out . . .
Then she realized that the little
footprints didn't end there.
No.
The trail turned and continued back to
the bank.
Her heart beginning to beat again, Mom
scrambled back up the bank.
And there was her little daughter,
heading toward the barnyard.
Mom scooped up her baby and carried her
back to the house.
Then spent the rest of the day
alternately crying and hugging Christine.
Infinitely grateful for the divine
intervention that had protected her daughter.
Mom raised all of her six children to
adulthood on that ranch.
Rescuing them from such things as:
Altercations with the local livestock.
Wrangles with barbed-wire.
Numerous falls.
Differences of opinion with power
tools.
An infinite number of scrapes and
bruises.
And, yes, plucking them from the muddy
jaws of death in a capricious river.
But she never forgot that moment of
stark and frozen terror.
Standing on the bank of the river,
looking at the trail of little tracks that ended at the great hole in
the ice.
And how differently it could have
ended.
Her very worst . . . and very best of
moments.
