It’s All Up In The Air…

Many years ago, when my husband and I were just a young couple with two lovely little daughters, we lived in the beautiful province of Quebec, Canada. Around about this same time his parents resided on an army base in the province of Ontario, which was a five hour drive from where our home was located. Every few months or so we would load up the girls in the car and set off for a weekend visit to the in-laws.

One particular Sunday, at the end of another visit, we embarked on the usual five hour trek back home. It was a very pleasant day, the sun was trying to make its presence known and the traffic, as luck would have it, was just moderate. We had been on the road for a few hours at least, when I felt or sensed a change in the air.

Don’t go against your inner knowing. Just don’t. Trust yourself ~ Maria Erving

I did not comprehend what I was feeling, but became extremely uncomfortable. For some reason, I kept looking out the car window up at the sky, as if the explanation was somewhere to be found in the blue heavens. The feeling persisted, becoming even stronger, with almost a sense of doom attached to it. I did not mention it to my husband as I had no conception as to what was occurring.

Well, the next thing I knew, we felt a huge impact as someone plowed into the back of our vehicle. At that time there was no such thing as seatbelts and my husband shouted to the children to get down on the floor. They immediately complied. Once again we felt a strong gust as another car rammed into the one that had hit, us forcing us into the back of the car in front of us. In total we had a five car collision! Miraculously no one was hurt.

Over the years I managed to put the incident behind me although I never did forget that ominous feeling.

Later in life we ended up becoming happily entrenched in the glorious province of British Columbia, where we live to this day. We used to live on a lovely piece of property, which was somewhat in a rural area. As most people with a decent piece of land, we ended up owning a beautiful, big dog. Each day I would take our Mastiff for a walk and had soon established a habitual route.

Lo and behold, one day as we were ambling along, I had that same foreboding feeling again, and once more just automatically looked up at the sky for answers. I could see nothing out of the ordinary, as I my first thought was we might be experiencing a tornado (which never happens in that area) or some other weather anomaly. I continued home from our walk with the feeling in full persistence and gradually got through the rest of the day with a great sense of unease.

You must train your intuition – you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide ~ Ingrid Bergman

The next morning, I heard on the news there had been a train derailment exactly on the same path that we had taken, and once again, despite the carnage, there was no harm done to anyone.

The third time this profound sense of apprehension raised its mysterious head, we were living in our current home for a couple of years. On this particular Tuesday morning, as I was about to get the ladder ready for a painting job… up popped that old familiar feeling! I looked around and naturally stared upwards again, seeking an elusive explanation. Nothing.

I continued with my preparations, ignoring my prickly ‘gut feeling,’ and climbed the ladder to start painting. I was hardly at the top of the ladder, when down it came… with me on it! This time there certainly was some serious damage, with me ending up breaking my back.

To say I wished I would have given more credibility to that feeling would be an understatement! I now fully believe those earlier warnings were just a precursor to let me know what would be occurring in the future.

There used to be a gentleman in our area who was known to be able to accurately predict an oncoming earthquake. When questioned about his ability he answered simply, “I just look for all the missing cat signs…” Apparently, for at least two to three weeks before an earthquake shows up, cats are able to sense something in the air and disappear, until it feels safe to return. Consequently one sees all those missing cat posters on telephone poles before earthquakes!

I have never thought to ask a cat if they feel all this is up in the air, but if the opportunity ever presents itself to me, I will certainly take advantage of any information they might want to share with me. It just might save me, or anyone else who is interested, a whole lot of grief.