Bakersfield Angel

 

Here is something that happened, something that is true.

Someone I know had a bad day. The other morning, he set his work portfolio on top of his car. This tidy, zippered book held his life. His business checks. His receipts. The invoices he needed to send to clients. Records of all the work he had done for the past month that needed to be billed out.

He set this work book on top of his car and drove away.

He realized what he had done after he drove thirty miles down the hill to town and got out of the car to do errands.

His book of life was gone.

Haven’t we all done this?

Left something on top of the car and driven off?

I’ve done it with soft drinks and tea. My mama lost a library book that way. My daughter left her wallet on top of a gas pump once.

My friend spent the rest of the day in a panic, driving up and down the freeway near his house, hoping to catch a glimpse of his book. Maybe it had fallen off the car and rolled down the embankment? He had a friend hang his head out the window as they drove along, flashers on.

There was no book.

This is a fine time to insert a reminder, a public service announcement of sorts, that perhaps it is not such a good idea for us to have books that contain all of our lives, books whose loss would leave us devastated, distraught, bereft.

No book should hold that much power.

Maybe you don’t have a book like that, but possibly you have a phone? Or laptop?

Do you have things backed up?

Which makes me realize that if I ever lost my old school calendar, the one in my purse that holds all of my clients’ contact information and massage appointments, I would be in a heap of trouble.

(I also read somewhere that it is a good idea to make photocopies of the cards in your wallet, including the customer support numbers on the back. In case you ever lose it, you’ll at least know what was in there. So let’s go do that now, shall we? Stop reading and examine our wallets and possibly pay for cloud storage of all our important documents and photos and while we are at it, get the darned Go Bags ready, because fire season is coming…

End of PSA.)

My friend was sure that all was lost.

Until the next day, when he got a phone call.

He got a phone call from someone who lived in Bakersfield, which is more than 300 miles away. This fellow had seen the book on the roadside,  stopped, wandered along the side of the freeway to pick it up, figured out a way to contact my friend, and was letting him know that he would drop the book in the mail to return it to him.

A miracle, no?

Except that is not the end of the story.

A few days later, he got another call from the Bakersfieldian.

This good Samaritan (possibly an angel) confessed that he forgot to put the book in the mail when he said he would, and felt so bad that he got in his car and drove it back here. That’s more than a 600 mile round trip that would have taken at least ten hours and cost who knows how much in gas.

He drove it here and hid it on the side of the road at my friend’s exit (near where he found the book in the first place, I guess). He put it behind a rock, told my friend exactly where to find it, and then drove home again. My friend has asked repeatedly for his address so that he can send a thank you note and gift card, but so far he has not responded.

Tonight, the book is safely back where it belongs.

So many terrible things happen every day. There seems to be no escape from the bad news rolling by on our newsfeeds. But how often do we read about a stranger who drives 600 miles to return something that he found on the side of the road? For me, it’s a picture of heaven, a reminder on days when the darkness seems to be winning.  In a world where an 18-year-old can buy an assault rifle and murder children and teachers, in another place, someone will drive ten hours to return a lost book.

It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to believe. It’s the kind of thing that gives me hope.

Maybe someday, all our lost coins, lost sheep, lost sons, lost books will be returned to us. Maybe everything we ever loved and lost is gathered safe somewhere, just waiting for us to come home.