fate

(yet another post that's been sitting in my vault from a few months back...)

Maria wrote a post a couple months back about the road not taken, and the great "what if", and as always with this subject it got me thinking...

We all have those roads we personally travel, making our own choices and decisions that shape our lives. But what about the the choices made and roads taken before we're born? We all owe our lives to people we haven't met and events that happened long before we were here.
Some we know about, and others we never will.
There are three stories my parents told me about that had they not happened, I would not be here now.

The first one was about how one of my mother's brothers (she had five) invited a new neighbor of his who was single at the time to a family get together at his house, to meet my mom who was single herself at this point. You can guess where I'm going here. Thanks Uncle Weston...
And it's funny how life works with chance (or in this case, arranged) meetings. My mom grew up in Newport Beach, California, and my dad spent part of his life doing the same, and they had told me a few times about how she worked in the local five and dime as a teenager, and my dad remembers going in there many time for purchases. They both said they had no doubts that they met back then, but never remembered it.

The second story was about the dermatologist my mom went to in the fifties to have a malignant skin melanoma removed from her knee. Back then the common course of treatment was to burn them off, like a friend of my mothers did who then ended up dying six months later because the treatment caused it to spread. But my mom's doctor went against the medical current and cut the mole out, leaving her with a large scar on her knee, but saved her life. She put flowers on that doctors grave after he passed away ever year for as long as she was able to, she was so thankful. Thanks Doc...

The last person was President Harry S. Truman, because had he not dropped the atomic bombs on Japan that ended the war, my dad had been scheduled to be in the first wave of what was called Operation Olympic, which would have been the mainland invasion of Japan. My dad's "job" was going to be to drive onshore in a jeep to "see what was there" as dad told the story. I read once that the predicted average lifespan of those first invasion soldiers was put at 1.7 seconds. Thanks Harry.

What stories of fate do you have in your past?