Her angels

Her angels

    "Consider this.  These days 

     Angels are tacky" -Jeffery Beam

Not a Hallmark ornament in glowing plastic

nor one of those Christmas light stencils

hanging from the telephone poles at strip malls

in December, wings blinking back and forth

like hands clapping in the cold.

My mother builds angels

from scraps of organza, taffeta, satin

leftover from the wedding dress

she made for her daughter

who left her this summer.

Scraps sewn together the way

God maybe stitches pieces

of those who left us

into elegant patchwork emissaries,

swan-winged guardians

for us, the tacky ones, clumsy here

among our ornaments and lights.

       - Adam Tarleton 

        Christmas 2000

My son wrote this poem for me 10 years ago.  The year I made this angel -

and many more like it.  

 During the Christmas season, my home is awash with angels in all shapes, sizes, and styles.   

They remind me of God's grace.  

 I believe in angels, and in this quote from Sophy Burnham:

"We all have angels guiding us. . . .They look after us.  They heal us, touch us, comfort us with invisible warm hands. . . .What will bring their help?  Asking.  Giving thanks."

 I can't remember when I began to collect angels, but I do remember when I made my first angel.  It was a crocheted angel made to adorn the top of our Christmas tree.  

Some years later, after admiring this angel, a neighbor loaned me a book of patterns for crocheted angels, and I made this one as an ornament.

When cross stitch was all the rage I stitched this little one for the tree.

But the making of angels took on more meaning after my oldest daughter was married in 1994.  I made an angel for her from scraps of the fabric I used to make her wedding dress.  I made myself and the women in my family one from the same pattern but different fabric.  Mine was calico.  the skirt is designed to hold a small bag of potpourri.  

  Each year after that, until just a couple of years ago, I made angels as Christmas gifts for the women in my family, and I also made one for myself.  

I've made tree topper angels

and angels from sea shells.

One of my favorites is this woodland angel with wings of peacock feathers.

There are some small angel tree ornaments

and the angel with wings of copper wire that hovers in my plants.

A dark-haired calico angel with a birdhouse sits on the cookbook shelf

and there is a little round glass angel made from a vase on my dresser.

Friends and family have blessed me with gifts of angels over the years.  In 1996 my oldest daughter stitched this beautiful angel for me as a Christmas gift.

A few years ago I realized that I had enough angel ornaments to fill an entire tree. 

Now the angel tree is the first Christmas decoration to go up each year, and sometimes the last to be packed away.

May you feel the presence of angels around you this Christmas.  May they remind you of the source of all joy - God's love and the precious gift of His Son.

Merry Christmas!