i don’t believe in angels, but …

i don't believe in angels, but i bought one anyway.  light pink and translucent, as you imagine an angel would be.  i picked her out of a hundred other angels that looked exactly like she did; a veritable new car parking lot of tiny stone angels, side by side, wing to wing.  

my friend is a reiki master and has been connecting to stones in one way or another for almost 50 years. i used to buy jewelry she made from precious stones and as she morphed to using stones directly for healing, so did i.  the angel came from one of her “magic markets.” 

the angel sat for months on the far right edge of my writing desk between essential oils, a half-used stick of palo santo and a candle. i felt nothing for her; no power emanated from her nor did any loving feelings escape from me.  maybe she was just as she was - a stone, one of a million pulled from a mold, shaped like a butterfly whose wings were permanently flaccid. she remained lifeless there; often i barely noticed her.

what impels us to change?  what mysterious force causes us to move from being one way to becoming another? what was the last thought i had before i decided to put her in my pocket and carry her along for the day, to give her a job, a chance to be something other than statuesque and still?

in her book, “kitchen table wisdom,” the writer and physician dr. rachel naomi remen says, “wholeness lies beyond perfection.”  i read that line before bed that night and left the angel on the bedside table beside me.  

in the morning, stumbling to grab my phone in the dark, i knocked the angel to the floor.  her now disattached fragile right wing lay beside the book on the hard wood floor.  the gasp i took surprised me; the rising fear of my inner superstitious self, did not.

with the precision of michaelangelo painting the sistine chapel, my dear husband crazy glued that little pink wing right back. impatient to restore the angel back to her pre-fall glory, i picked her up before she was dry.  the result, a slightly deformed wing with a permanent chunk of glue on her shoulder blade.  

she became strangely beautiful. 

a secret in my pocket, the angel accompanied me for weeks - on early morning runs, to the dentist, masked work meetings, and on my writing table in a more prominent spot, gently leaning on “walden.”

the crack in the wing, shall we say, opened something up in both of us.  

the angel and i were bonding.  

and then the inevitable, carry-her-around-and-she’s-gonna-break-again moment came and she slipped out of my hand, a long way down from the top of my dresser. with trepidation, i glimpsed down at her to see how she fared in the dive.  

the super-glued wing stayed in tact.  a small victory whose meaning was not lost on me.  but the other wing, less fortified with the alchemy of the loving repair, did not make out so well.  that little pink wing lay at the foot of my dog, already startled by my shriek and the truth that these wings were not meant for actual flying. 

“you may want to consider leaving the angel at home, in a safe place,” said my husband tentatively, knowing my tiny glass object had attained some mystical status.  (we recently had to turn around and drive an extra 20 miles when i realized i had left the angel at my sister’s house.)

her left wing very tender, i gave her time to dry. some tiny shards of angel dust had made the second gluing a bit more tedious, and shall we say, imperfect.  so that wing hung a little low and there was a bit of space where her whole arm used to tuck into her side.  

let me say this.  the next morning i sat at my desk.  the light coming up in the sky reached out and grabbed my angel first and then my heart second. we glowed together.   

in the way she imperceptibly leaned to one side, almost a hand on her hip, fearlessly standing, she was absolutely divine.  i wanted to hug that broken bit of stone and glue and tell her how much i loved her. 

i breathed out something old and stale and had this rush of a feeling about my own brokenness and healing and grace.  

recently, there was a sale in my favorite plant shop.  in a hidden corner, there were a dozen perfect pink angels, imported from italy.  expensive and precious.   my little angel came into my mind, just as she is - imperfect, worn, mysteriously holy.  i bought some yellow flowers and went home.