The Myth of Angels

By Rom Watson
c. February 4, 2012

While strolling through The Louvre Museum in Paris, I noticed the angels in the religious paintings.  Angels have been depicted in a certain way for centuries, and many people believe in the images that have been handed down to us through the ages.  I, however, don’t subscribe to those visual depictions of angels.  My idea of an angel is much more corporeal.  What led me to this conclusion?  The same experience that led me to Paris.

A few months previous to our marriage in October of 1988, Cory and I went to a Bridal Fair at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  This was not my idea.  This was Cory’s idea and I went along because I wanted to marry her.

She seemed to think a Bridal Fair was a good idea, and as the tickets were only six dollars, we went.  We walked up to the ticket booth and sitting inside was our friend Maureen.

This was surprising, because Maureen didn’t work at the Convention Center.  However, there she was, and as she sold us our tickets she explained she was filling in for a sick friend just for that one day.  She also told us there was a door prize, and handed us a slip of paper to fill out.

Cory’s full first name is Corinne, and her maiden name was Selby.  So she wrote “Corinne Selby” on the slip of paper, along with her address, and handed it back to Maureen.  (Yes, this is important.)  We had to be present to win, but since there were only two or three hours till the drawing took place, we knew we would be there.  We said goodbye to Maureen and headed in to the convention center.

The Bridal Fair consisted of rows of vendors hawking their wedding-related wares, and we wandered up and down the aisles, getting ideas about what we did and did not want to include in our wedding.  I was not bored out of my mind, but neither was I having fun.  When my blood sugar dwindled I found a place to sit down.

Twenty minutes before closing, they began to give away the door prizes.  An older gentleman with noticeably thick eyeglasses took to a small stage and picked up a microphone.  He seemed to fancy himself a host, and that fancy turned out to be his only qualification for the job.  (This happens sometimes.  People are given a job for no other reason than they think they can do it.)  The fact that he looked like Orville Redenbacher with a bad dye job did nothing to dissuade him.

After a few introductory remarks, he thanked whoever needed to be thanked and began to pull folded slips of paper out of a large glass vase.  After giving away the lesser prizes, it came time for the grand prize: free airfare for two to Europe.  The winner could choose between Berlin, Barcelona or Paris.

The host read from a slip of paper, and called out, “Connie Seebee.”

No one spoke up.

He repeated, “Connie Seebee.”

Again, no one spoke up.

“I guess I’ll have to pick another name.  Connie Seebee?”

Cory raised her hand, shouted, “I’m here,” and raced for the stage.

Had she been lying to me all this time?  Was her name really Connie Seebee?  Or was she taking advantage of the fact that Connie Seebee wasn’t there that day to claim her prize?

The truth, as she explained later, was that she noticed his thick eyeglasses and realized he was misreading her name.

So, that’s the story of how Cory won our honeymoon in Paris.  Which is a great way to start out a marriage.  Yes, we had to pay for our hotel and all other expenses, but if she hadn’t won the airline tickets we never would have gone.

Later, we wondered about the synchronicity of Maureen working the ticket booth.  To be clear, we don’t think she did anything deceitful, and we saw the host pull the names at random from a large glass container.  But . . .perhaps Los Angeles really is the City of Angels.  What were the odds that we would know the person handling the door prize entries, someone who was there for only that one day of the fair?  People speak of an angel on their shoulder; perhaps Maureen’s presence served as an angel on our shoulders that day.

We’ll never know.

We do know that we had a wonderful honeymoon in the City of Light.  Paris is a truly beautiful city, and commencing our marriage there was a sublime gift, a highlight of our lives.

We went in late October, and stayed for 10 days.  The only time we left the city was to take a train to Versailles.  While in Paris we visited the Louvre, the Musée Rodin, the Musée d’Orsay, etc., and gazed upon great works of art.  The museums of Paris are a treasure, containing centuries of awe-inspiring and inspirational images.

Including angels.  Though well rendered and often beautiful, I don’t think they look like that at all.  Wings were a way to explain how they hovered.  Halos were a way to portray their auras.  The angels in those paintings are a myth, as tangible as dragons.

If the myth of angels is that they have wings, then the truth of angels is that they are all around us.  Every time we perform some act of kindness, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, we’re being angels to those around us.  Every day, those around us are being angels in return.  And we rarely know how.

We are all of us a band of angels, carrying each other home.