A singed angel figure provokes reflections on what is truly valuable in our lives, writes Breda O'Brien
I WENT looking for it the other day, because I was tired and out of sorts. It was in its usual place on the bookshelves in the living room, which in our disorganised house constitutes a little miracle in itself. Most of the time, I don't even notice the tiny, plastic figure. It is only about four centimetres high, and for sure, it will never win any fine art prizes.
It is a little kneeling angel in a green gown. If you look closely, the base is slightly warped, and there is a dark stripe on the tip of the right wing. Look closer still, and you will see that the eyebrows look suspiciously dark, as do some of the curls.
It is an angel from a crib, and it is the only remaining figure from the set. I found it, more than a decade ago, when wandering dazed around the smoking ruins of the house I grew up in. It was in the grass, and to this day I have no idea how it survived.
My parents lost everything they possessed in the fire although, typically, they preferred to focus on the fact that no lives were lost. My brother spent days sifting through ashes in an attempt to find my mother's engagement ring, but in vain. It had been immolated, along with all our photographs, her wedding dress, all my father's carefully preserved newspaper cuttings and documents, and just about anything else precious that a family accumulates over generations.
How did the little angel emerge unscathed? Perhaps it was not even in the house at the time. It may have been taken and dropped in the grass by a child, years before. Perhaps the force of something exploding flung it out of the house. Anyway, there it knelt, just feet from what had once been a home, its hands folded pensively under its chin, and a serene smile on its face.
I took inordinate comfort in the survival of a plastic figure that had probably been mass-produced in China. I still don't really know why. I don't even know exactly why I went in search of it the other day, to turn it round and round in my hands. It is not a talisman, or a lucky rabbit's foot.
However, I love it. I asked my parents whether they wanted it, but they did not. You might think it crass to ask to hang on to one of the few objects that survived, and you would probably be right. However, you would have to meet them to understand.
My mother has since gone to heaven, but my parents operated on a simple principle. Give, and then give some more.
For years after my mother's death, the envelopes from religious orders kept arriving to request her regular donation. I think she must have supported half the missionaries in Africa.
You never miss what you give, she used to say. I first remember her saying that to me when I asked her about giving a book to a big girl in sixth class. I was four, and I loved the big girl, but I loved the book. You never miss what you give, my mother told me. I gave the book, and it hurt like hell. I could have learned a lesson then, but I didn't. The best giving costs us something.
My mother probably never read Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address, in which he appealed to the "better angels of our nature" in an attempt to heal the divisions that would eventually bring the Union and Confederacy to civil war. However, she would have understood the metaphor very well.
The background to that famous address is intriguing. In his initial speech, Lincoln ended quite harshly, declaring that people would have to choose between peace and the sword. His secretary of state-designate, William Seward, urged him reach out instead.
Seward drafted the final paragraph. The original still exists, and comparing the two versions offers a fascinating insight into the workings of Lincoln's mind, and his skills as an orator. Seward provided the basic structure, but adapted by Lincoln's hand, the sentences soar.
Seward had originally included an appeal to the "guardian angel of our nation". Lincoln chose instead, the "better angels of our nature". Lincoln struggled all his life with melancholy, a deep, disabling darkness. Some biographers have argued that this depression deepened his understanding of human nature, and gave him the resolution necessary to follow a course where other feet would have faltered.
His phrase illuminates the struggle with which every human being is familiar, between our selfish urges and our more enlightened selves.
For the past few years, our better angels have taken a bit of a battering. There has been a rough, selfish edge to our human interactions, which at times spills over into catastrophic violence. We have not spent our wealth well. Now we stand, shocked, in the smoking ruins of a world economy.
Our better angels may have been pushed to one side, but angels in general are extremely fashionable. I stood in amazement in the new bookstore in Dundrum Town Centre, when I realised that there were literally hundreds of books about angels on sale.
My little plastic angel would not fly too well among those angels, I fear. My angel does not find me parking spaces, or open the doorway to wealth, or raise my self-esteem. My angel just reminds me that sometimes you can find something precious in the midst of devastation, something small and simple and serene and intact, though not untouched.
The tip of my angel's wing has been burned. Its eyebrows and curls are singed. The base upon which it kneels is a bit wobbly and bent out of shape. Yet if I were offered one of Michelangelo's angels in exchange, I would have to decline.
I own a number of cribs now, one made from fine porcelain, and one made by women in a co-operative in Peru. I even have cute, rounded plastic crib figures that the children used to play with, finding no incongruity in including Pikachu or a gorilla the odd time in games involving the Virgin Mary. Such are the perils of houses with children. But my singed angel, somehow, speaks of the first crib more eloquently than any of them.
bobrien@irish-times.ie