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6 a story Can Change yoUr Life On the morning she became a young widow, my grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow, looked up from her work to see a hawk turn her prized rooster into a cloud of feathers. That same moment, halfway around the world in a Minnesota mine, her husband died, buried under a ton of rock-fall. She told me this story sixty years ago. I don’t know if it’s true but it ought to be. She was a hard old woman, and though she knelt on Sundays when the acolyte’s silver bell announced the moment of Christ’s miracle, it was the darker mysteries she lived by: shiver-cry of an owl, black dog by the roadside, a tapping at the door and nobody there. The moral of the story was plain enough: miracles become a burden and require a priest to explain them. With signs, you only need to keep your wits about you and place your trust in a shadow world that lets you know hard luck and grief are coming your way. And for that —so the story goes—any day will do. ...

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