Angels

As in:

Lydia began to notice the changes a month after her 58th birthday. The way certain people in her life–the young man at the auto service center she frequented, two cashiers at her local market, the tall girl who cut her hair–were increasingly more pleasant and helpful than she could have any reason to expect.

Up until then, a long period in her life had been increasingly dispiriting.

In her youth, she was not the kind of person to have asked to have a shape and a face that would open doors and bring smiles as easily as they did for her. But these were her traits, and with them came a quiet, joyful confidence, knowing that she could expect to turn heads, to enjoy favors and entrances. On the best days she enjoyed an otherworldly feeling that she carried sunshine in a bottle inside her purse.

Then, perceptibly, it dissipated. Day after day. Year after year. Not because people were mean, but just because people were people. Her arthritis worsened, she gained twenty pounds and walked with a slight limp due to a traffic injury that never quite healed. When the day came that she realized, without a doubt, that her best years were behind her, it hit her much harder than she ever imagined it would. She sobbed when she thought people weren’t looking. It got so bad that she daydreamed about easy ways to commit suicide, as if there were such ways.

Yet now it seemed as though her life was coming back, toward a different sort of grace, as unexpected as the grim depression she’d worked through. The kindnesses these few people extended seemed so inexplicable, so undeserved. The young man from the repair shop drove her to work and jauntily took her by the arm into the office for safe delivery. The checkers at the market initiated discounts and began stashing her favorite items beneath their counters, just for her. The stylist sought her advice on the best way to resist the advances of certain types of men and artfully conveyed how Lydia surely must have experienced this problem throughout her life.

Were they angels, or was she imagining it? It was very real, she decided. But why? Why her?

In this time with these questions, a dream informed her that she was pleasantly caught in a seam between the physical world and a spiritual realm, oscillating between entropy and miracles. The dream was so vivid that she woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. But the pain in her hip was gone. So she swung her feet over the side of the bed, noticed that her alarm clock was reading 2:42 a.m., and then playfully flexed her toes, in wave-like fashion, beneath the peach glow of her night light.