The Heart-Stopping Almost

Miss M has started taking horseback riding lessons, which is spectacular for both of us, since I get the fringe benefit of petting the horses' noses, cooing, and looking deep into their eyes while she's grooming them.  The only down side is that I was in a production of Equus in college, and I'm incapable of being at the stables without the line "He blinded six horses with a metal spike?" echoing through my head ad nauseum.

However, last week at the stables I had a serious parenting low.  We were told we could feed Miss M's horse (her borrowed horse.  No way are we in own-a-horse land), so we brought carrots.  Miss M had the carrot in her flat hand, just like she was supposed to, but the horse was craning its neck over a bar to try and get it, and couldn't reach low enough.  So I raised her hand higher, assuming she was going to keep it flat as it rose.

Instead she turned her hand upright.  I didn't realize.

CHOMP.

The only thing between my beautiful child and four less fingers was an extremely gentle and well-trained horse who realized that the delectable nuggets between his teeth, while they certainly seemed like carrots, were in fact not, and he probably shouldn't bite all the way down.

Miss M was fine.  Freaked out and a little sore from the teeth grinding against her innocent little fingers, but fine.  No blood, no broken skin… not even a mark.

I, however, am still hyperventilating over the horror of what might have been.

It happens all the time.  We come within a hair of disaster, and it's only pure, dumb luck that saves us from an unbelievably hideous fate.  I can think of a litany of near-misses in my own life: everything from the obvious (almost car accidents) to the more creepily insidious (the rabbi on whom I had a mad crush from ages 11 to 15… who is now a convicted child molester).  Things like that are freaky enough in my own life, but thinking about them in terms of Miss M?  It's enough to have me breathing into a paper bag 24/7.

I have no solution.  I suppose the devout rely on God to guide them through, but not even the most devout are impervious to the flying fickle finger of fate.  The only real answer, it seems, is to live the best we can, and hope the Heart-Stopping Almost… remains an Almost.

What Heart-Stopping Almost moments have you had in your life?