Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

I forget that the reason to go somewhere is not because I know what the event will be like, not because I know in advance the kind of conversation I’ll have with friends. The reason to drag my sometimes depleted self out into the world is because that’s the only place to find angels with whom I can sing and dance.

 
I entered the sanctuary alone, and took my place in an empty row near the front, in the mostly meager Friday night service crowd. My heart heavy, my soul bruised, grief having played through me these last few days like the records I used to play over and over in my childhood room, crying with lyrics I knew were coming but couldn’t bare to turn off, crooning the stanzas of strength and rebirth after loss as if never having sung them before, cycling through devastation and relief and the oddness of landing in a life that no longer has its predictable course. A life with gaps where people I love used to be.

In front of me a little girl sat by herself, bubbling and effervescing and radiating aliveness, not a stitch of grief or sadness to this lone being. We’d not met before, even though I know her grandparents, who create and lead all the music for the service. I told her, with my best feigned parental nonchalance, honed over years with my own small fry, that she was welcome to sit next to me and we’d share the book, and she was also welcome to stay where she was. Without the force of being told what to do by some unknown Other, she freely hopped off her seat and clambered in next to me. Together we followed letters in the prayer book, stood and sat and sang – she knew almost all the words by heart, despite not being able to count or read the words on the pages or turn to the correct page. We danced, we sang some more, we turned to one another to emphasize the melody, we clapped in unison, we whispered like schoolgirls.

My angel inhabited a small and lithe four-year-old body, eyes green and shining with mischief and power and the subtle way of appearing as if it was she who needed companionship and protection, never once revealing her divine task to replenish and fill the lone and weary stranger who would sit, just like she was told she would, one row behind her, wearing widow’s black.

She fulfilled her task, filled me with Light, just like angels are wont to do. My weariness and sadness dissolved in her song and youthful beauty, replaced by a growing certainty that every moment in my life had to be precisely as it was so that I could in be in this exact right place, singing and dancing with an angel, joy softly blanketing the painful moments that had settled like a fine dust over me.

It will be something when present day angels find their place in the Louvre or the Uffizi hundreds of years from now. No flowing diaphanous gowns, no palm fronds or wreaths of laurel, no wings.

Innocence, Singing will show a small girl with green eyes. She’ll have shoulder length blond hair, sporting a trendy braid down the right side of her face, the remains of purple nail polish on her small fingers, a pink top over a white ruffled cotton skirt, tiny red and purple and pink polka-dots disappearing in and out of the folds, purple leggings, black patent leather shoes with a dainty strap across small feet, revealing socks with purple and pink and silver dots. Marissa’s smile, less elusive than Mona Lisa’s, will show her whole set of tiny white teeth, just under her upturned nose, and the little scrunch she made with her whole face. The artist will capture her as an angel in motion, her whole body leaning in and out of me, kneeling on the chair so our faces could be very, very close while we sang to one another, pulling a long strand of my hair straight out toward her, following the twirl of it with her finger. The paint will glimmer with the laughter and delight that effortlessly poured out of her, into me.