Jennifer's Guardian

Connie Kennedy of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, has the best job in the entire world, just as I do: we’re grandmothers!  But there is an enormous amount of responsibility that accompanies this task, and one day Connie’s angels were really put to the test.

“About three years ago, I bought a new Suburban,” Connie says, “and I wasn’t quite aware of all its safety features right away.  Along with the new car, we had also purchased a new car seat for our eighteen-month-old granddaughter, Jennifer.”  Connie felt more confident each time she drove, and eventually decided to do some errands on a day when she was caring for Jennifer.

“I was on my way to another town, going along a highway, and Jennifer was in her car seat which I thought was correctly strapped down into the back seat,” Connie recalls.  The Suburban’s back doors were also childproof.  But….Connie hadn’t realized that she had to enable the locks first.  The car was on a long stretch of highway where some construction was going on.  Connie was leading about fifteen cars when all of a sudden, the back door next to Jennifer flew open!  Shocked, Connie realized that the toddler had managed to get out of the car seat harness and open the lock!  Her car seat, barely strapped to the seat, was wobbling around---any minute she could somersault right out of the seat and onto the pavement.

Jennifer wasn’t falling, however.  Instead, she was waving at something.  “Hi!  Hi!” she kept calling, wearing a huge smile.  “Her face was lit up like a spotlight,” Connie says.   “I couldn’t see anything out there in the fields for her to be waving at….and although I was in a panic to stop, with the construction, there was no place to pull off.”

Calming her voice, Connie talked quietly to Jennifer.  “Give me your hand, honey,” she murmured, reaching back, “and hold onto Grandma until we can stop.” But Jennifer was absorbed in whatever she was seeing.  “She just kept laughing and smiling and talking to whoever it was outside her window,” Connie says.  Finally, after about five hundred yards, Connie managed to pull off on a side curb.  She got out, re-locked everything and then shakily made her way back onto the highway.

From time to time, Jennifer continued to look around, then smile and extend her hands to someone Connie couldn’t see.  “But I knew what was happening,” Connie says.  “Jennifer should have fallen out of the car seat, and perhaps have been run over by the cars behind us. But something held her safely inside, until I could get us to safety.

“Thank God for guardian angels.  I know one was with us that day.”

(C) 2006  Joan Wester Anderson  www.joanwanderson.com

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