God's Hands

For you make me glad by your deeds, LORD; I sing for joy at what your hands have done.                                                                 –Psalm 92:4

                A few days after Christmas, 1968, my boyfriend Don and I were travelling home with his family after spending the holidays in the tropical Florida Keys.   After a pit stop at a gas station, Don decided to ride in the car with his parents, while Connie and Susie, his two teenage sisters, and I chose to lounge in the Airstream trailer being towed behind. We had been on the road for a few minutes when Connie noticed that the trailer door had not been completely shut.  We wondered briefly what to do, picturing the wind catching the door and blowing it off.  We feared we would be in big trouble!  Because this was in the days before cell phones, we had no way of communicating the problem to Don’s parents in the car.  We gathered on the floor by the offending door trying to decide on a plan, when suddenly, Susie decided to act.  With no warning, she reached out, grabbed the door knob and pushed the door open a bit, intending to give the door a good slam shut. 

                By this time we were travelling somewhere between 50 and 60 mph, and the wind did almost exactly what we had pictured, it blew the door completely open with  Susie hanging on the door knob, dragging her out of the trailer!  This happened so quickly that neither Connie nor I could react in time to grab her before she was whisked out of our reach.  In my memory, what happened next seems to have been in slow motion.  I remember lying on my stomach halfway out the door, trying vainly to grab her.  I remember telling her I couldn’t reach her.  I remember Susie screaming that she couldn’t hold on and seeing that her dangling legs were being pulled by gravity and the wind toward the wheels of the trailer.  Incredibly, no one in the car had seen a thing, so we were still barreling down the road.  After what seemed like hours, but was probably only seconds, I yelled to her that she would have to let go.  She screamed no, but then, suddenly, she did.  I saw her fly off the door and land on the side of the road as we continued rolling away from her. 

                At  that point I got on my knees and leaned as far out as I could, screaming and pounding on the side of the trailer with both hands, to get the attention of the people in the car.  Finally they saw and heard me and pulled to the side of the road.  Don’s mother was the first to get out, smiling and trying to reassure me that there was no need to have risked my life because of the door, but when she and her husband, who had come around the car to join her, finally understood my frantic gibberish and pointing, they turned their horrified gazes back down the highway.  Don’s father began running as fast as he could in the direction I was pointing.  We were unable to see Susie and had no idea what might have happened to her.  Time stood still as we waited, not sure what to do.

                Then, incredibly, we saw him walking back up the road with a badly bruised and scraped Susie walking beside him.  We drove straight to the nearest hospital and waited nervously while she was checked out.  Amazingly, the most severe injury she sustained was a hairline fracture of one arm, which did not require a cast.

                When we resumed our journey once more, with the three of us tucked safely back in the trailer with a securely shut door, we began to talk to each other about what had happened.  Each of us was describing the event from her perspective.  Then Susie said to me, “Thank you so much for pushing me off the door!  I never would have had the courage to let go if you hadn’t, and I could see my legs were about to be dragged under the wheels of the trailer.”

                It took a moment for me to register what she had said and then I replied, “Susie, I didn’t push you off the door, I couldn’t reach you.  I tried and tried, but you were too far away.”

                “But you did,” she protested, “I felt your hands on my back.  You gave me a big shove away from the trailer and I landed on the side of the road.”

                We all sat there in silence for a minute.  Over forty years later it still gives me chills to remember.  I shook my head in wonder, “Susie, those were not my hands,” I said.

Copyright © 2008 Bonnie Petroschuk. All Rights Reserved