==JAPAN: KM== [Accident]

I think I have spent a comparatively uneventful life. Fortunately, I haven't gotten a serious sickness or injury yet, but I have had three rare experiences. Perhaps they have changed my life entirely. When I remember them, I can't help feeling terrible and wondering why I was able to deal peacefully with such unlucky situations.
The first accident happened when I was one year old. Of course, I don't remember it. I heard about it from my parents. At that time, I had just learned to turn head over heels. I was enjoying turning somersaults over and over on the mattress on the TATAMI. There was a porch at the end of the Japanese-style room, and the paper sliding door and glass windows were open in front of it. But while mom's eyes were off me, I was rolling toward the window. There was a big paving stone under the porch and the height from the paving stone on the ground to the edge of the porch was more than 50 cm. It was clear that if I fell straight down to the paving stone, I would have a serious problem. But I flew over the paving stone while turning head over heels in the air. Luckily, I fell on my rear end on the lawn, so I narrowly escaped danger. Fortunately, I didn't get even a scratch. My father saw this scene in the garden. He was very surprised and said, "Oh! You can be a gymnast in the future."
The second happened when I was three years old. One evening, my two sisters took a bath for a long time. So my mother said to me, "Please go and tell them to get out of the bath quickly." "OK. Mom," I said. I turned and ran toward the bathroom. It was at the end of the corridor. I ran along the corridor at full speed, so I couldn't stop when I came in front of the glass door. I fell and plunged my head into the door. With a very loud noise, the door flew into pieces. My parents were all in a fluster and came quickly. Their faces looked pale. "Are you OK? Do you have any pain?" They asked. The only thing which I was conscious of was a dull pain in the head. "No." I answered. I looked around, seeing that various sized pieces of glass and some pieces of my hair were scattered there. However, fortunately, I wasn't bleeding from any part of my body. "Oh, no! Don't move!" they said. "There are many pieces of glass in your head! Sit still! I'll take them out." Their hands were trembling. After they finished taking out most of the pieces, my mother combed down through my hair very slowly, and we could hear the sound of powdered glass as it fell to the floor. Because of this incident, my long hair was cut off.
The last happened when I was five years old. That day we had heavy rain with thunder and violent lightning. I was afraid because I had a piano lesson on that day, but just when I was going to leave, the thunder began to calm down. I was very punctual at that time and glad that my piano teacher always spoke well of me for that, so I felt though my mother told me to wait for a while. When I walked a little, suddenly, lightning flashed with a deafening roar. I was absent-minded and stood there. My mother cried, "Oh! Yuki! Yuki!" as she ran toward me. She hugged me tight and her eyes were full of tears. Looking around from her arms, I saw small blue flickers and the remains of a fire by me. On that night my father scolded me for not following my mother's advice. However, after that he said with a smile, "You are very lucky, to be short. If you were tall, thunder would have hit you, not the ground."
I hear that my grandfather was a priest. It is said that a priest protects his descendants for three generations. I have never met him, but he might have protected me from these dangers. I want to say, "Thank you very much" to him. And I have one more thing which I want to tell him. "Please help my children, too!"

COMMENT
In my childhood, I had many injuries almost all over the body. When I was nine months old, I was trained to walking with a walker which had three wheels on. As I made progress, the walker gathered speed which was too fast to stop its wheels for myself, and to make matters worse, a window opens to the yard. Needless to say, I was injured in my forehead and the scar on my middle of the forehead still remains now, though twenty years have passed from this accident. To my regret, my grandfather seemed to neglect his duty to protect me from Heaven at that time.

Sachiko Itoh