If They See Angels

    We were in the kitchen, my Dad and the baby and I. I think it was my brother Peter who was a baby at the time. There was always a baby in the house, always until I was 16 years old. At the time, I was only about 8.
    The house was the first one I lived in and the first one my Dad ever built; a beautiful two-storied structure with an amazing upper deck that looked out over rolling hills. We could sit on that deck and watch a storm roll in from miles and miles away, watching from the first dark cloud with the silent glance of a lightning bolt bursting inside it, to the thunder that crashed around us and the rain that pelted our skin and sent us running, laughing, indoors.

    That morning when my Dad and I were in the kitchen was a moment which has stuck in my mind like a bit of film reel, as some memories tend to do. The baby was in a mechanical swing, going back and forth and back and forth. The swing was one you had to crank to start. So without fail every time the baby was drifting off to sleep the swing would run out of power and come to a stop, and if the baby woke up at all from the loss of motion than he woke up completely from the loud 'crank crank' of starting the swing up again, tiny arms and fingers springing out in front of him in the startled way that babies have.

    We were watching the baby, swinging quietly away. His eyes were staring straight ahead and a peaceful look was on his face. My Dad said, "I wonder if he's seeing an angel."
     I looked at my Dad; puzzled, quizzical. He explained:
     "Angels could be all around us, at any minute, so what if babies are able to see them because they can't talk about them? Just look at the way Peter's staring off in front of him. What is he looking at? What if he sees an angel that is watching over us right now?"
     "I never thought of that. Wow," I said.
    "It's a thought. Maybe it's true or maybe it isn't. It makes me wonder. No one remembers anything when they are a baby. We see and forget, so what if we saw angels but couldn't say anything about it and just forgot over time, as they stopped appearing to us as we grew older?"
    "I like that thought," I said. "Babies seeing angels."
    My Dad smiled. We both knew that it could be a silly thought, but it was a beautiful one, whether silly or true. We didn't know. We couldn't know, not this side of heaven, without a bit of divine intervention. Maybe other people have had the same thought before. In any case, it's a thought which has stuck with me and which I love. So many ideas need a little faith and a little imagination and they can become wondrous things. I'm glad my Dad never grew out of having those kinds of ideas. I fully hope I never grow out of them either.