On Miracles

Whatever you do today, don't miss Dan Barry from Saturday: A MONTHLY calendar, courtesy of a gas station on Jerome Avenue, hangs in the kitchen of a spare apartment in the Bronx. The 14 pencil strokes upon its face represent 14 successive days this month that one family got past without incident.

But the space reserved for Saturday the 15th remains unmarked, as do all the July days that follow. That is because Saturday the 15th is the day the youngest in this family, a fussing bundle of boyhood called Bryce McMillan, all of 23 months, fell out a seventh-story window.

Some stories about children leave us wishing. We wish we could have stopped Tiffany Gunaratne, 9, from chasing after her dog on Staten Island, so that car would not strike her. Or have warned Jennifer Moore, 18, disoriented in West Side darkness, not to share a cab with that stranger now charged with killing her.

We wish we could protect all children. But since this is impossible, we wish for miracles.