In the Arms of an Angel

Of course. You know, I'm weird. You know it, and I know it, too. I have these discussions with myself, and when I write my stories, with you as well, that I don't hear anybody else having.

I think about Angels occasionally. I mean, I really, really think about them.

You know, or maybe you don't, but angels do. From forever, Angels have known everything, so I mean, there they are, forever, knowing everything.

... and their looking down at us ... they are looking down at me.

And, you know how it is: when you so know something, and you so try to tell somebody, or you so try not to, knowing if they only listened to you, they would just avoid so much trouble and heartbreak. I know you struggle with this, because I've read your PMs to me.

So there this angel is, my profile pic, and she's weeping.

She's probably thinking about me.

And, the thing is, angels don't cry. I mean, they want the best for you, but that also includes ... what do you call it? free choice? No: free will, so I screw up, and I either learn from it, or I keep screwing up until I do learn or I die, and there the angels are, cheering me on, wanting the best for me ... loving me.

And that statement, right now, really hits me like a ton of bricks ... or a ton of feathers from angels' wings? Because ... well, I grew up how I grew up, but I've always felt alone and ... well, unloved, and when I do feel love it's like WHAMMO! and I just reel under that.

I'm probably not going to keep this pic up. It called to me. Maybe there's a story in there, called something like: "My Guardian Angel" and why she's weeping, or something like that, or not, but it called to me, and I shared it with you.

They say the sea is cold, but in it runs the hottest blood of all.

Angels, mermaids, vampires.

I am surrounded by super-natural things in my thoughts, and my thoughts take life and you read them in my writing.

I am surrounded by miracles, and maybe there's an Angel looking down from Heaven, weeping for me, and my silly, silly choices and struggles. Maybe she is weeping.

But I know she loves me. That's so hard for me to believe. I'm loved by something that knows everything about my nature, but still loves me.

And, sometimes, I wonder why I exist. Heh: 'sometimes.' Okay, a lot of the times (sometimes I don't, 'cause I'm happy or sad or writing or making an iced latte or ... whatever), but I heard once that women should cover their heads so the angels won't see them and be tempted away from Heaven (I so know the temptation ... often).

AND I also heard that why I'm here? And this is a shocker for me: why I'm here is to teach the angels.

The angels know everything, but they have never, ever experienced one single thing. Not one hug, nor laugh, nor cry, nor ... writing a story nor going to the bathroom nor eating gnocchi (God! poor things!) ... and the only way they can experience that: feeling hurt or love or hungry or happy, is through us ... through me.

Right this second, me crying at my keyboard, I'm teaching an Angel, my angel, something through my experience.

And that, right now? It gives me a little bit of hope, and a little bit of strength that I didn't know I had.

Thanks, there, Angel. Be seeing you around.

p.s. and oh, btw, this pic is of the Angel of Grief, also call the Weeping Angel. The original is in Rome, but this one is a replica found in a New England (of course, do you see the stark, barren, forlorn tree? So New England. I'll touch on New England later, as I have before).

Gnocchi and ... nothing

My favorite dish is gnocchi, but I can never make it like my Nana made it.

'Made it.' She died of cancer two years ago, and it feels like yesterday that I was holding her nothing hand as her body was eaten away by the cancer in the hospice. But every time I do take out the left-over mashed potatoes and the bag of flour, I make them as I watched her making them, and smile, remembering how she guided my tiny hands in her powerful ones as we made gnocchi together.

That was my Nana, my Italian grandmother.

I don't have one memory of my Irish grandmother. My understanding is that she ... drank, and she died when I was only a little girl. So I don't have any experience of being Irish, really, just some stories and my looks and that's it, because my mom's, you know, American.

I don't know where I'm going with this, because I am an American girl, and, as you may have read, I'm proud of that, too, but I'd also like to have a connectedness to my history, also, I guess. I mean, America has history, but not like history as in history, like the Italians or the Irish or the Greeks where they can go back more than a thousand years without breaking a sweat, and they can show you the places and buildings that older than that.

People who know their cultural heritage have a rootedness to them that I ... don't.

And I want that. I want to know that by making this cup of coffee I'm repeating the action that my ancestors have been doing for a thousand years, and I do feel that sense of peace when I make gnocchi and feel Nana's hands guiding mine, even today. But I don't feel that in much else of my life: turmoil is more like it. Restlessness. Rootlessness.

So if you do have a connection to your history, your culture, your past ... please treasure it and pass it on, because here's one little lost girl who so wants that grounding in her life.

kisses, 'phfina