I remember as a child when we would visit my Gran'ma. She was very old when I was very young, and lived alone in a tiny little house that seemed to me removed from every vestige of civilization. It existed beyond even the scattered and sparsely populated towns and villages far north of our home, and required driving through miles and miles of dark fairy tale woods and abandoned, immensely overgrown farmland. It was a place where power lines didn't even reach. It was small and wild and I always felt a nervous drop in my stomach as we'd pull into her dirt drive.

In the summer, the dust from the path leading to her cottage would kick up in billowy puffs of choke, and it would take forever to settle. It would rain back down into tiny puffs of rust colored spatter, drifting down over our windshield and shoes. I would always look behind the car to see the tire tracks, temporarily etched into the ground and shifting back swiftly into their previous condition. It felt like Gran'ma's house was always trying to deny our being there, trying to wipe out any evidence we'd arrived at all. I knew that wasn't the case, but it was a fun thing to think.

Gran'ma would always welcome us at the door, as if she'd just been waiting there for us. Most times she'd have a big tray of cookies or muffins or some other delicious baked good in her hands. She was a little woman, absolutely perfectly sized for her gingerbread cottage. She looked like a crumpled paper doll, creased and thin and practically transparent. Her smile would take up the bulk of her lower face, and it would fold her flesh into such deep canyons that she would practically lose her eyes in them. She looked so friendly and so old. She smelled like perfume and flour. After we'd each taken one of her offered pastries, she would set the remainder on her little, dark wood kitchen table and hug each of us tightly, leaving a bit of her scent upon us. It was a heavy and sweet smell, like a bakery sharing space with a florist. It would stay on our clothes all day long.

During the day, we would usually sit with Gran'ma at her kitchen table sipping on tea or coffee or honeyed milk, and we would listen to her tell us stories about long forgotten cousins, or my departed grandfather, or the days she spent at the 1894 World's Fair in Chicago. She would tell us about her father and mother, and what it was like to live through two world wars. She would show us the elaborate wooden labyrinth game that her brother had engineered and carved for her fourteenth birthday, and she would inform us of the best way to grow gladiolas. We would listen to her for hours, and you could see in her ancient face just how happy it made her to have us nearby.

Gran'ma would always make us an overwhelming dinner with copious amounts of food. There would be piles of baked chicken and scalloped potatoes and steamed carrots, or beef roast and vegetables and soups and chili, yams and sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce and stuffing. There would be cream of mushroom casserole or stuffed peppers or cabbage rolls plus two or three kinds of pie. It was always too much, but Gran'ma was always worried that it wouldn't be enough. She would fret over our meals, and even go so far as to deny herself a full meal just to make sure we all were fed properly. There was such a rich feeling of fullness after Gran'ma's dinners... it felt like every inch of me had been crammed with tasty home cooking.

After dinner, Gran'ma would equip each of us with a mug of warm cider or hot cocoa and wrangle us into her small den. The ceiling there was low and the rafters were rough hewn logs, exposed and thatched together making a dark cavern out of the room, lit in pale yellows and oranges by a miniscule fireplace, a few tarnished oil burning lamps and tall church candles. The floor was wooden and covered in intricately woven rugs made of dull colored fabrics. The walls were too close together and the room was cramped and full of chairs and an antique upright piano. The flickering lights and the bevy of objects created a shadowy theatre, always in motion and always dreamy and otherworldly. The smoke from the logs burning in the fireplace mixed with the smell of the candles and the remnants of our dinner's aromas and filled the room with a homey, thick feeling that sapped oxygen from the space and made us all sleepy and content. It was like stepping back in time, drinking in the past and connecting to something long dead that most people would never get to experience.

Gran'ma would shuffle around the room for a bit, checking on us and making sure she was being the most hospitable hostess in all of existence. Then, when she was assured we were all perfectly taken care of, she would dust off a large hymnal and root through its pages, taking out loose leaves of sheet music. She'd usually take out something very old timey, like "Leaning On The Everlasting Arms" or "The Church In The Wildwood" or "Low In The Grave He Lay." Then she would dutifully set the page up on the piano's ledge and amble out of the room and up her small staircase for just a moment. She would return swiftly, and happily, with a small wooden box, a hexagonal thing topped with a geometric and angular dome and a small brass handle. She would set it down next to the fireplace and open it carefully and giddily.

When the top came off that box, the room would fill with a bright white flood, soft and radiant and moony. From inside the box, Gran'ma would lift up a tiny rusted birdcage. And inside, there was something brilliant and small, a prone figure that looked made of luminescence. It had long blinding hair and a glowing robe and feathery wings... it was, it seemed, a tiny fairy-like angel.

My Gran'ma would hang the cage up from a hook over the piano and plunk out a few sour notes before launching into whatever hymn she had picked out for our entertainment that night. As she tenderly struck the keys and lilted out the old canticles, the angel would lift itself in its cage and dance gorgeously to the melody. The little thing was beautiful, her gown flowing in illuminated waves around her, her wings beating and fluttering to the time of the music. It was a hypnotic dance to watch, full of joy, full of praise, and it made the songs so visceral and real. It made those hymns bristle with importance. And when Gran'ma had completed the song, the angel would slump down again, downtrodden and obviously miserable. Sometimes my Gran'ma would play another song, but just as often, she would remove the angel's cage from the hook and return it to the odd shaped box she'd retrieved it from. It was always the saddest part of our visit, having to watch that angel go back into her box.

I remember one time asking my Gran'ma if it was wrong to keep the angel caged up like that.

She smiled her crooked, ancient smile at me and said, "Angels is made for us, boy. Angels is made for us."

THE END.

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