Yes, there are angels among us. We have one upstairs!

Last night, our 6-year-old son Connor called his dad and me into a top secret meeting in Ava’s room.  Big brother Dylan wasn’t allowed to hear anything, nor the cat or dog. Ava?  Well, she was missing (or so he thought.)

“Mom.  I know Abuh’s an angel.  I know she knows how to pop her wings in and out so that nobody can see them.  I know that she leaves her room at night to fly.”

He paused, looked me over for signs of doubt, and then proceeded.

“And now I know how she does it.” 

You see, a few years ago whenever Connor first met Ava (they are step-siblings but they have no idea!), he needed an explanation for the two vertical scars that ran along the length of her shoulder blades.  The scars were remnants of Ava’s first back surgery, and at the time were a rather sore sight to see on an otherwise perfectly healthy looking child. It was the first time we were able to see on the outside of her body a reminder of the chaos happening on the inside.  In the days following Ava’s surgery, I would tell her stories about how she used to have wings (because she’s an angel, of course) but that she didn’t need them on Earth so the doctor decided to remove them and keep them safe in a closet until she was ready for them again. 

When Connor came into our lives, I shared the story with him, and as it usually goes he decided to tell me the rest of the story…a little bit here and there, and continues to do so.

What we came to learn from Connor is that Ava got her wings back.  He explained to us that she needed them now to practice flying, so one night he helped her get them back and put them on. “Okay…well, where are they?” I asked.  “MOM! She knows how to pop them out and then pop them back in to keep it a secret! Duh!”

Next, he shared with us that when we sleep, Ava gets in her flying hours.  When she injures herself in real life, he tells us it was really a flying accident injury but that she didn’t want us to know in case I were to have her wings taken away again. One thing he could never decide for certain though was how she would get out of the house.  A theory he seemed to favor the most is that she would go through his window and then leap off the roof. He even thought he might have heard her once or twice, as clumsy as she can be.

When we were summoned into the top secret meeting and sworn to secrecy, I had no idea we were going to hear more details of our daughter’s secret life.

“You know how she does it?” I asked him. “Does what, Connor?”

“I know how she escapes!”

He squealed and then hushed himself as he pulled back her curtains and showed to us the tiny spot of broken window damaged by Hurricane Katrina, repaired with a plexi-glass shield, and then long forgotten. Piece by piece he lifted it up until a small breeze of air could make its way through.

“Do you see this? She’s been leaving through this hole! And she’s not in here…I think she has already left!”

Ava hadn’t left, in fact she was downstairs on the living room floor scooting herself in circles, but Connor didn’t believe it. He had worked so tirelessly to find out the how to the mystery of Ava the Angel, and tonight, he struck gold.

“She changes herself into bug size so she can get through this hole and go discover new bugs.  That’s just what I think.  I’ll ask her when she gets home.  Dad, do you think bats will eat her? Will they know she’s not a bug?  Maybe they will see that her head still looks like Abuh.”

Friends, I will tell you this.  There is unexplainable joy in having a child with such a creative mind and compassionate heart that he can dream his special little sister into being something so….angelic. There is hope to be given in having a child that will search his life away for all the answers about Ava that most of us don’t even think to ask.

A little later on Connor came downstairs and found Ava still wiggling on the floor. 

“Dad! Abuh’s home now! I think she crashed down here or something. Abuh are you o-tay?”

He jumped down near her lap to debrief her.  What did you on your adventure, Abuh? Did you change into bug size? Did a bat eat you? WHAT? An OWL tried to eat you?  All the while she coo’d, her grin grew larger, and she answered him with her infamous thumbs up.  Drew and I listened to the two of them ‘’talk” for a little while and I laughed at his silly translations of what she was saying.

When he finished, he scooted closer to her face and turned his ear towards her, lowering his head so that we could barely hear him. 

“Do your angel call, Abuh.  I want to learn to how change into one.”

I had to know more. 

“Connor, what’s an angel call?”

“It’s a sound angels make when they talk but you can only hear it when you’re an angel.  It sounds like fffffiisssss ffffissss. I can hear if I try really hard.  That’s just because one day I will be an angel with her.”

It’s hard for me to keep from crying when he says things like that.  I can’t wait to hear the call one day, too.