How to engineer a miracle

Let me tell you the story of how a mouse can make you homeless.

Back in 2015 I was living in Thanet with my 14-month-old baby and my 6-year-old daughter. I was also hosting my mother and my sister with her son. So, my kids and I were sleeping in the living room on a mattress on the floor. One night, while I was breastfeeding, I heard a squeaky noise and I saw it staring at me. I jumped up, with the baby still hanging from my breasts, and started googling ‘how to get rid of a mouse.’ Apparently, the options are quite limited and ineffective, with a crawling baby who puts everything in his mouth.

The next day I was informed by a local friend that the area has issues with mice. Some years ago, there was a fire at an abandoned storage house and mice spread everywhere around. I guess that explained why our property was the only one we could find the year before, after three months of actively looking for a flat, while being hosted by my sister’s British partner. All other properties wanted a UK based guarantor, with a high income. That was impossible since we had just arrived in the country. I was even quite surprised how easy it was to get that flat. Well, my sister was not so surprised to be honest.

‘All the immigrants live there. Maybe you should keep looking. Although... I think you’ve stayed here way too long already and you can’t still be here when the baby comes. I hope you understand that...’

‘I thought that’s what we are here. Immigrants. I can’t afford to be picky at the moment. I am due next month.’

‘Mum, can’t we find a house near these pink trees, on the way to the park?’ My daughter asked.

‘No sweetie. This is a very posh area. We can’t afford to stay there.’

When I asked for help from the Council, they offered to keep my kids in the country and send me back to Greece. (Thank you very little.)

Yes, I was grateful for my flat. I could see the sea on one side if I stretched my neck out of the window and I could see the moon from my living room. OK, the lady downstairs was a bit... how can I put it nicely? As if she had never seen kids before. She kept knocking on our door to be quiet whenever my kids were playing. But inside that living room my son was born. I loved it. It was mine. We were finally settled, or so I thought till that mouse came to mock my sense of stability.

The house hunting started again. Same story. Still no guarantors. Still no fairy godmother. Till one day my mother came home with a new friend. She had found her in the neighbourhood. Heard her speaking Greek on the phone and approached her. She came full of promises. She said that if we gave her some money to secure a house, she will find us a property. My mother gave her £250, and she showed us a beautiful flat, in front of the seaside. She said she knew the estate agents and she would arrange everything. She even gave us a moving date. My current flat agency said that if we wanted our deposit back, we would have to let them know a month before that we were leaving. So, we gave our notice.

The weeks passed and we started packing. Mum thanked God for that miracle. It was years since the last time I ever believed in a God. But I was grateful to the Universe.

‘Don’t worry about a thing. I will take care of everything. You just prepare your stuff and be ready for the moving day. We have to help each other when we are in a foreign country. You were lucky to find me. I’m sure it was because of your mother’s faith.’

The lady said that and we believed her. I admit something didn’t feel right, but I thought I couldn’t afford to not believe her. I could still hear the mouse every night. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head (when the baby was waking up to be fed) of it eating our ears, in the middle of the night. So, we just kept packing.

One week before the moving day the truth was revealed. Apparently, it wasn’t really the mouse that would make us homeless. It wasn’t the Council that wanted to keep my babies and send me back. It was our compatriot who would send us to the streets. The new estate agents asked us for a guarantor. No, they did not know the lady in person. Yes, they had already told her from the beginning that they want a guarantor. No, they couldn’t do any exemptions.

My mum went to the Greek community priest.

‘Why didn’t you consult with me first Maria?’ The priest said to my mother. ‘That lady is well known to the community for finding ways to scam people. I’m afraid there is nothing I can do now.’

So, the miracle was a scam. God was a scam. As for us? We were naive, and about to be eaten by a mouse in our sleep.

I went to my flat’s agency to tell them that we were cancelling our departure.

‘You can’t do that. You signed a paper that you will leave. We have rented the place already to someone else. You need to go in a week.’

‘But...’

‘The most that I can do is give you another week.’

 

At work that day I was crying my eyes out. I was working in a school as a cleaner. I had my most depressing music on my headphones and was avoiding everyone, so they wouldn’t see my red eyes. How could I be so stupid? How did I manage to make us homeless? It was all my fault. I was the one responsible and no one else. I and my need to believe. As if I wasn’t supposed to be over with all that. Nietzsche was clear. God was dead. It didn’t matter whether we killed him or he never existed. He was dead and I was stupid.

Rubbing the nursery’s toilet tiles, with eyes blurry from tears after a cover of ‘Where is my mind’ by Puddles Pity Party, my phone played his ‘All The Small Things’ cover.

‘Say it ain’t so. I will not go. Turn the lights off. Carry me home...’ 

‘That’s what I need. Someone to carry me to a home. Away from mice. Away from scams’

I said out loud to no one.

‘It’s a shame that miracles are a scam. I could really use one now. I won’t even have tiles of my own to clean next week, or a bed, or even a mouse...’

Right then I remembered the ‘law of attraction.’ A new-age idea that Rudolf, an old friend, spoke to me about many years ago. I thought I was as naive as my mother. A terrifying thought indeed. More terrifying than the mouse. More than homelessness.

But what if my mother and Rudolf had a point? What if sometimes faith is the only option? No. There is no Father Christmas. There is no hope. Hope was just the last evil left in Pandora’s Box. Hope is actually the easiest way to end up homeless.

But what are the options when... there is no option?

‘Hope.’ I heard me whisper. ‘Hmm.’

Well, I suppose at this point a last faith experiment won’t hurt. What did Rudolf say? Something about gratitude.

‘Don’t just ask. Change your concept of faith. Don’t wait for what you need. Convince your brain that you already have it.’

‘That’s totally crazy’ I shouted in the empty bathroom.

Well. I’ll definitely go crazy if we end up in the streets, I thought. I stopped my depressing playlist and put ‘What a wonderful world’ on repeat. It really sounded ironic in the beginning. But I love this song and soon I found myself humming it. My tears stopped. While I kept rubbing the tiles, I made myself believe they were my tiles. The tiles from a new house. My house. I kept rubbing and humming and dreaming.

When I finished the nursery, I went to change the water in my bucket to go to the other classrooms. In the corridor, I met the only colleague that I was OK with meeting. Lucy, a sweet girl who I spoke to sometimes during break times.

‘You alright?’ she asked mechanically, as she was dragging the hoover in the big corridor.

‘Not really.’ I replied, with eyes still red.

‘What happened sweetie?’

‘We are about to become homeless in a fortnight.’

I briefly explained everything to her. The mouse. The Greek scam lady. The monthly notice that we couldn’t take back.

‘Hmm. I might be able to help actually. I have a childhood friend that is renting a property next to my father’s house. I also live near there. Let me get back to you tomorrow. Don’t worry. We’ll find a solution.’

‘...’

I was astonished. It didn’t take half an hour for the gratitude ‘spell’ to have worked. No. That seemed too good to be true. It can’t be true. I did experiment with visualisation when Rudolf first mentioned the law of attraction and no miracles happened then. Why would it work this time?

Because now I really need it? Because this time I managed to stop my self-pity thoughts for a while? Because last time I was asking and now I was actually visualizing? Because now there is no other option?

 

I went back home and told my family the good news.

‘What good news? This is no news at all. Just another promise. Actually, a much vaguer one than mum’s scam miracle was.’ My sister said.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. By the next afternoon, when I went to work, I was exhausted by sleeplessness, anxiety, and the fight I had all night with myself and my faith.

The next day at work Lucy said that she had spoken to with her neighbour and he was ok to rent the house to us. It was actually happening. I couldn’t believe it.

The day after that Lucy helped me clean the house. Yes, it was a house, not a flat. With a nice yard, and parking. Not just that, but the tiles were black and white chessboard, my favorite kind of tiles. Plus, Lucy was nearby.

 

Soon we were finally settled. The winter came and passed and then the spring started to bloom, and we started exploring the area.

‘Mum look.’

‘What?’

‘Look.’

‘I’m looking. I see a roundabout. What about it?’

‘Don’t you see?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s the pink flowers. Remember?’

It was the pink-flower-trees. Just because we were new to the area, I didn’t realize all these months (what? I had too much in my mind to google-map, ok?) that we were living just a block away from these trees. The ones that I had told my daughter about two years ago that were ‘too posh’ for us. Rudolf’s visualization-with-gratitude and Lucy had brought us where my daughter had dreamed to be. In a house with the kitchen tiles that I had always dreamed of having.

‘What do I make of all this and faith?’ I asked one of the trees hugging it as tight as I could, and then I kissed it. I was going to hug these trees and be grateful every day for as long as we stayed there.

Maybe faith and hope are not the way. Maybe you can’t ask for a miracle. Maybe you have to create it yourself. With gratitude and a bit of madness. Convincing yourself you already have it. Maybe it works only when you really need it. Maybe it was just luck. 

P.S. I have written about that before, but now I thought to share the details. you can find the first post here: Miracle engineering