Wish Angel

I love how sometimes you put your hand in a coat pocket and pull out a $5 bill that’s probably been in there since the previous winter. It’s found money, and maybe you’ll take a trip to the vending machine while you’re at work, or stop for some ice cream on your way home because that money doesn’t have to figure into your weekly budget at all. Or sometimes, cleaning up the junk drawer, you come across a cartoon that you ripped out of the paper one day and somehow it ended up with all the other junk you don't know what to do with. But, as soon as you see it, you remember why you ripped it out in the first place and you smile and think you’ve got to put it somewhere better than the junk drawer.

It’s like coming across little treasure chests or time capsules in the normal course of a day.

A couple of years ago I got a tiny little silver good luck frog to carry with me in my purse. At the same time I got this little thimble-shaped silver box that has an angel on top. It's called a wish angel. You're supposed to put wishes in the box. I always have the frog with me, but I thought I lost the wish angel box. I know this is kind of silly, but I worried that the wishes I put in the box would be lost too. I couldn’t remember exactly what wishes I had put in there, but I was sure if they were important enough for me to write them down on tiny little pieces of paper and put them in the tiny little silver thimble box, then they were probably pretty important. At least to me.

Out of the blue the other day I found the wish angel. I stepped on it as I was walking across my bedroom. The only thing I can think of is that I had picked it up with my winter clothes when I packed them away last spring and it fell out as I was unpacking them last weekend. I found my wishes! They weren’t lost after all.

I opened the little box and pulled out the three tiny folded pieces of paper inside. The first one was one I had suspected would be there. It said, “I wish for Brianna, Alex, Ryan, Hunter, Zachary, Brennar, Graeme, and Lleyton to grow up healthy, happy, and loving.” The second was a personal wish for myself. The last one said, “I wish for Christopher to come home safely from Afghanistan.”

Christopher is my baby cousin (even though he is 24 years old and married). The little red-headed, blue-eyed boy with the precious chubby-cheeked grin. His younger brother Jason, my other baby cousin, the little blond-headed, blue-eyed boy with the mischievous smile and the gleam in his eyes, didn’t make it home from Iraq. I wore a bracelet with a yellow ribbon charm on it while Jason was away, and I swore I’d wear it until he came home. I took it off in August of 2005, and the yellow ribbon charm from the bracelet sits in my jewelry box now. That wish that I put in the little wish angel box was a very heartfelt and heavy one.

Christopher did come home safely from Afghanistan earlier this year.

Sometimes you get a lot more than a $5 bill or a funny cartoon when you find something you thought you’d lost.

My cousins Christopher, Craig, and Jason in October 2004.

Jason died on July 30, 2005 in Muqdadiyah, Iraq.