I got these two angels on my windowsill. They are drawn against a background so black, it looks like velvet. The angels are standing on a golden highway. They are facing each other. One is dressed in teal, the other in blue. From a distance, their forms are illegible. Their wings are just dots, like stars. This pastel has been carefully displayed behind glass, in a dusty blue and gold frame. I must have found it at the dump in my hometown.
These angels are a mystery to me. No clue who drew them. The drawing is a nice place for my eyes to rest. I had them on my shelf in Ipswich. One day back then, I ran out of lemons at the same moment I really needed more. Chris the mailman dropped off a package right then. It was a box of lemons Mary picked from her tree in California. It was such a hilarious relief. So I put a lemon next to the angels. That lemon is long gone now. In its place, there’s a smooth pebble I picked up right down the road from Mary’s old house. On the other side, there’s a tennis ball. Whenever this golden dog named Fig comes over, she walks straight to the tennis ball, picks it up in her mouth, and carries it around the room. The tennis ball is green, but just as bright as those Meyer lemons.
I’ve been remembering that everything I encounter is my life.
That following Summer, I was pulling up scallions in the mud with Olivia. We talked about painting. I remember feeling a little anxious, and a little apologetic, to share a thought that I still hold. That interactions of color are evidence of God. But Olivia laughed and understood. The scallions were almost warm as we pulled them from the mud. The sky was grey, and the scallions were gradated white to green, like a dipped wax candle. But this, of course, was hidden by the mud. The mud was another color, I can’t quite remember. When we washed the scallions in a big tub at the top of the hill, the water got murky and the scallions got clean.
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I meet these beautiful people and I wonder if they are angels. Then it becomes abundantly clear that they are not. We are all failing in these cool, human ways. I make an effort to idealize no one. Idealization, you know, objectifies. Still, my eyes rest on the angels in the window as I write this.
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I wrote about Martín Espada’s Angels of Bread this Spring, without knowing that he was my neighbor. He lived right down the road from me. His prayer:
so may every humiliated mouth, teeth like desecrated tombstones, fill with the angels of bread
got me through my illness. I repeated it in my mind, constantly. Once the ice cleared and I was well enough, I walked down to the library. There was a sign on the table that Martín would be reading that night. I gasped and the librarian thought it was funny that I gasped.
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This summer, my husband and I split up and I got my driver’s license two days later. I drove alone to the orchard and bought a cheap box of near-rotten peaches. I drove one-handed down dirt roads with the windows open. I didn’t look at the peaches while I was driving, but I felt the peach fuzz on my lips. It was heaven. I got peach juice all over my body and steering wheel.
There was that moment, and then every moment alone in the car when I blasted Fleetwood Mac’s song Angel:
So I close my eyes softly 'til I become that part of the wind that we all long for sometimes, yeah
And the wind came to me from all sides. And the pop song repeated in the CD player like a chant. And the peaches got ever sweeter on the dashboard. And time passed and I replaced the peaches with persimmons. And there were times when I was impatient and the persimmons were astringent. And more time passed and I drove into December with the windows still open. And the sky changed from grey to bright cold blue, I noticed.
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Yesterday was New Year’s Day. I was over at Norma Jean’s house for dinner, we were drinking miso soup. She boiled kombu in the great clay pot her friend Connie made. I wasn’t keeping track of the time, but eventually Norma lifted the lid. Steam rose, condensation dripped, and the seaweed relaxed and expanded.
I was talking to her about angels. I was thinking about Bruce Springsteen, the prince of driving irresistibly:
For all the shutdown strangers and hot rod angels, rumbling through this promised land
Well Norma ladled the soup into our bowls. I asked something like, what if an angel isn’t a person or a being, but a moment of understanding?
And she said, you should write about it so that’s why I’m writing this. She wrapped half a loaf of banana bread up for me in a lacy cloth. We drove around last night blasting Bruce. All the holiday lights are still up. The colors are astounding against the velvet sky. I have no complaints.
A moment of meeting, a moment of understanding. One thing in relation to another. I must be talking about friendship. I’m not religious, I’m just silly, inarticulate, trying my best to make sense of the fact that I started this year in a hospital bed, and ended it in the driver’s seat, with rock music playing, in motion so exquisite my face hurt from joy.
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I’m looking at my angels on the windowsill. The morning light is reflecting on the dusty glass and I can barely see them at all.
Like a pop song, like a prayer, the image of steam from the soup pot is rising in my mind. It repeats, the CD starts over. I got all these contradictions that I’m calmly making nonsense of. When a moment of understanding comes, it comes easily as wind chimes. Even though the wind is inconceivable, I am still affected by it. My body is tense in this cold.
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I haven’t known how to finish writing this. It’s the early evening. My husband came over to begin divorce proceedings. He is still one of my best friends. We sat at the dining room table and I offered him chocolate after chocolate. He’s a baker now, he had flour in his eyebrows. We talked about logistics, but I couldn’t help but cry about the changes. He hugged me and I felt like seaweed relaxing in broth. I could have fallen asleep standing up. He’s no angel, neither am I. When I told him that I thought an angel might be as simple as a moment of understanding, he really looked at me and understood.
“... what if an angel isn’t a person or a being, but a moment of understanding?”
You’ve got me thinking! And hoping!