I gained a greater appreciation for the phrase “it dawned on me,” after I woke up with the light this morning with the clarity of the thought.
That there is even more to the story of the bank teller.
In September I had together in front of me three checks as I filled out the deposit slip to take to that credit union. Two small, one big, this amount, this amount, and this amount, all nicely tallied and ready to just hand over, done. I delivered these in person.
I didn’t notice for days that my deposit receipt had not included just over a thousand dollars in the expected total–and in disbelief, I went looking everywhere, checking various places and accounts, and found that somehow I had dropped that one big check on the desk and it had been left home; there it was. All innocent-like. I was mystified as to how that could have happened and just kicked myself for not noticing that the one at the bottom of the pile had been left behind.
But I was coming down with the flu by that point and a second trip over there wasn’t happening. I could tell you stories on our mail service, but that alone tells you all you need to hear about that.
Family came from out of town, airline tickets already paid for, staying at our aunt’s because I was still sick. (And surely the added carbon monoxide from turning up the heat while I was didn’t help–this was before the space heaters. I’m so glad the in-laws didn’t stay here, now that we know.)
During those weeks, at some point the thing got moved to a safe place so I could get to it when I got better and of course it became instantly lost.
It plainly needed to be here–the big check, specifically–till that new teller got that job so that I would have sufficient incentive to drive over there again for just the one and so would go have that conversation. And perhaps so that she herself would by that point have the information she needed on her friend to do what she needed to do with what she learned from me.
It was never all about the money. But there was no way to know that till later. And with my visual memory damage that I know that I have and know that I have to work around, I almost missed seeing the hugeness of the blessing and how it came to be, in my ordinary frustration with my own shortcomings.