This is an amazing story of hashgacha pratis. I know we have all heard amazing stories just like the one I am about to relate, but this one, the second after it happened, I knew there was no way I could not write about it. There was only one hitch – but that comes later, much later. For now, here it is, the hashgacha pratis story that happened to me one random, hot, summer afternoon.
I was on my way home from work with two errands to run. Remembering that I had promised my daughter, Yehudis Ester, that I would call her, I put my phone on hands-free and called as I drove. Now my usual route towards Staples, my first stop, should normally have taken me down Route 59 in Monsey, but I could see that there was way too much traffic ahead. Still, it was possible to avoid the headache of unwanted stop and go traffic crawling along, if I only turned off to take the parallel, and much less busy street, of Saddle River Road. As hashgacha would have it, just the first of many coincidences that occurred, I was in the nick of time to make the turn. I was quite pleased with myself, as I had shaved off at least three minutes of traffic time, according to my vague calculations.
Feeling smug, as well as highly focused on my conversation with my daughter, I realized with a start that there was a traffic light ahead, and I needed to turn at the light to get back on to Route 59. Being happy that hashgacha would have it that I had noticed the light in time, it took me a few seconds to realize, too late, that I had just turned at the wrong traffic light. (One would think I would have learned my lesson from the day before, when, while speaking to my daughter in law, Tziporah, while driving, I made an equally thoughtless move and ended up on the New York State Thruway instead of on the turn off the next street over, which would have brought me home in six minutes. That little fiasco cost me about 22 minutes in lost time, but all is well that ends well.
Anyway, in this case, in my defense, all I can say is that I don’t usually take Saddle River Road, and so, it was understandable that I had failed to remember that there were two lights, and that the light I had just turned on, was one light earlier than the one I had meant to turn by. It wasn’t that big a deal though. I would still be able to make it back onto Route 59 via this slightly more circuitous route. So, I continued on my way, not too bent out of shape about the new detour.
Imagine my surprise, when I spotted a black car with a vaguely familiar shape; I knew there were plenty of cars on the road that resembled my daughter, Yocheved Rus’s black Yaris: black Lexuses, black Hondas, and any other black, midsized car. They all look the same to me. My brothers, sons of a car dealership owner, would have been ashamed of me. I remember them calling out, not only the make and model of every car we passed when I was young, but the year of each model as well. I had never understood how they did that. In this case though, I was able to realize that there could only be one black car that actually contained my daughter, as well as her friend Chaya, or at least that is who it looked like as the car flashed by me on the left. But that made no sense. There was no reason for them to be traversing this side road at this time.