Last evening, the wooden shelf which has long held my china angel collection fell from the wall.  Five angels shattered on the floor.  The exact chain of events which led to this small disaster has no importance, except to note that my beloved stepson caught the shelf and saved the other twenty or so angels from following their sisters and brothers to obliviion.  His deft move also meant that the birth-month angels which had belonged to my Nana and my Grandpa did not fall.

This morning, I discovered that my blessings bracelet has vanished.  I have a rocky history with bracelets. I daily wear two cuffs, one silver, one copper, right and left.  These durable bands have survived while my mother’s identification bracelet, an antique silver charm bracelet and several inexpensive but sentimentally valuable bead bracelets broke, slipped off and disappeared, or suffered other sometimes mysterious maladies. Just this week, not counting the blessings bracelet, I’ve snapped and broken two:  a black and gold bead given to me by my father, and a white and green little thing that I’ve had since I was five.  My son fixed the latter but I don’t dare tempt fate by wearing it again.

Except for my grandparents’ angels, most of my collection came from thrift stores or as gifts.  The five which broke came from my sister Joyce at various times.  Four or five which she gave me remain, as does my first angel, “Hope”, which I think might actually be a fairy.

Despite the loss of my blessings bracelet and a fifth of my angel collection, I feel serene today.  Oh, there was the terse fifty-minute call with Google Fiber about a scam pulled on us and their unwillingness to fix it; but really, they started it.  I can laugh about it now, but it did rather get my ire.  I was not complaining so much as asking them to help me address a hacking issue, and drilling up the food chain trying to find someone with authority to do so.  Had they not all refused their last names and had not one of them cut me off, and all right in the middle of my mad quest to meet a deadline, I might have kept my cool.

Through the rest of the day, I’ve been reasonably tranquil.  I know, as Jane said, that the blessings I’ve counted every day — even the mixed ones — did not disappear with the bracelet.  And the angels in  my life?  Those little china things just symbolized the many angels which come my way each day, both in the people whom I meet and in the little divine spark that seems to follow me around, stepping out to pull me back each time I nearly get creamed by a fast-moving truck.

This evening, I am going to be dining at The Wellness Table with my dear, dear friend Cindy Cieplik, who has got to be one of the most divine and divinely joyful people whom I’ve ever met.  She’s one of my angels, and one of my blessings.  I’ll miss the bracelet and those particular china angels which will soon be dust in a landfill somewhere.  But I’ll still count my blessings, and I’ll still depend upon the angels which dance ’round my head, and those which lull me to sleep each night with the sound of their heavenly choir.