Christmas Angel

     She has been patched and taped and stapled.  She’s had new wings and has had her halo wired on again. Her face is getting a little faded and I think her nose is chipped.  But, for me, she is the most important Christmas decoration on the tree.  It just wouldn’t be Christmas in my house without that tattered old angel smiling down from on high.
     I remember perfectly when I got her.  It was 1942 and I was six years old.  I took the money from my piggy bank (only I think it was shaped like a bear) and went around the corner to the variety store on Encinal Avenue to buy her.  I’d been looking at her for quite some time.  She was displayed in the window in a box with a glassine front and I knew that she would be perfect for our tree.  I don’t remember if my mother knew of my plan; probably not.  Mrs. Nagel might have, though.
     Mrs. Nagel took care of me after school and on Saturdays because my mother worked at the shipyards.  I think “Nagel,” as we called her, also did some light housework and maybe a little ironing.  What I mostly remember is that she crocheted almost all the time.  I have several table cloths and a bedspread, besides numbers of doilies, that she made for my mother.  Nagel also taught me to crochet and embroider, but I can’t say those were interests that stuck with me.
     I don’t have any memory of what my mom and dad thought about the angel.  I do know that she went on top of the tree every year from then on.  During the war, my grandfather always cut a tree for us from his property in Oysterville and sent it on the train down to California.  He also sent a big box of holly.  I have no idea how the tree and the holly got from the train station in Oakland clear to Alameda where we lived, but I remember waiting anxiously each year for “Christmas from Oysterville” to arrive.
     It was probably after the war that we got our first ‘Christmas Lot Tree.’  I remember that my mother had it flocked.  White.  And she put only red balls on it.  It sat in the living room picture window and my dad rigged up two spotlights so it was evenly lit.  I’m sure that my Christmas angel was not quite the topper that my mother envisioned for that elegant tree, but I have to hand it to her.  She never said a word and the angel was in her honored place that year just as she has been every Christmas since I bought her.  Sixty-eight years and counting!