Fate's Timing

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
13 August '10

I can't tell you the number of times I have been delayed or changed my mind about doing something...only to find that tragedy crossed the path where I would have been or the thing I would have done. A few days ago, Elie and I drove to Shmulik's base to pick him up. It's north of Jerusalem in an area very close to Ramallah and there are several bases there.

Shmulik wasn't sure how to describe how to get there...and so we ended up stopped at 3 out of 4 bases before actually finding him. On the way home, as we came down a long hill, we saw that there'd been a head-on collision on the road. Elie slowed, realized that we were there before any ambulance, and pulled to the side of the road, just behind a police van that had also just arrived.

Elie grabbed his medic vest and went off to see if anyone was hurt. As I waited for him in the car, I realized that had we not taken those wrong turns to check out the other bases, we might well have been on this road when the accident happened, perhaps even involved in it.

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