Angel

Gift from Elena, my four year old neighbor.

(Who also shares cake pops with me when I am gardening)

She stared down at the picture crossword puzzle blankly. The words were not gathering in her head- neither in Spanish nor English. She used to translate in hospitals and teach English but now each spoken or understood word was labor and often wrong. "You know what that is..." I tried to encourage her. "It has wings. They fly around in heaven. People have little statues of them in their car. Some people spray paint them on their shirts. They sometimes sing..." 

Her daughter looked over our shoulders at the illustration of an angel that her mother was stuck on. "Mom! It's me!" She explained that over the hundreds of hours she spent transporting her mother back and forth to doctor appointments and therapies, there was one day when her mother pointed at the ceiling of the car. Her daughter's wrist watch was reflecting the sun into an illuminated halo directly above the daughters head. 

"Your an angel," her mother responded. 

"I am definitely an angel."