Looking

Today I went looking for an angel. As I recall, she lived right on this corner of the old cemetery. This was our regular short-cut to school, through Bennet's Wood, along the edge of the ram field, over the curling pond, then across the cemetery. I guess we were tom-boys.

These two weeks watching Kaspar kitten throw himself at life, hunt out challenges, invent imaginary foes, create obstacles for the sheer joy of overcoming them, reminded me of something - myself in my youngest years.

The angel had gone, the stone-masons told me all the old statues had been vandalised a few years back. This place is beautifully maintained although there is a new cemetery now on the edge of town. I'd never spent time reading the inscriptions, shocking how many early deaths there were, even in recent times; how much backstory I never knew about local families. But no angel.

This is the gate we exited by, arms full of flowers scavenged for the teacher. But not today, no angel, no flowers, no exit. They'd locked the gates! This was a NO too far. Every cell in my body rebelled against this obstruction. How dare they lock my gates! There was no way I was going back through the other exit. I just could not do it. Those gates are higher than my head even now, topped with spikes. I stood in the sun laughing and sizing them up. I was not dressed for this in sandals and floaty top but that wasn't going to stop me.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a man scrambling over the wall farther up, shinning down a sycamore. Such a delight scaling the tree, bark smooth beneath my feet; balancing my stuff on the top of the wall, granite rough and warm beneath my hands; estimating the drop, the best way down. Another man had been observing all this from his car, he chivalrously raced over to give me a hand.

To be back in my old stamping grounds, rising to the challenge exactly as I did as a kid, fair made my day. I'd forgotten the intensity of that determination. Something quite close to the core of the shell of personality. An old and reliable friend that 's served me well, got me into and out of a whole heap of trouble.

I still feel the blessing of that angel's blind gaze.