Some Angelic Humans
Angels in human form, or humans just being humane
Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-in-green-jacket-holding-clear-glass-ball-5103899/
In the midst of pandemic lockdowns, my work-displaced chef husband turned his mom’s garage into an “essentials” food store. In the Philippines, the essentials were rice, cured meats, and frozen meals.
Francis, my husband, printed a hundred copies of his store’s price list. He thought, he could walk around the village, ring doorbells, chat with the neighbors, hand each of them a price list.
He decided against it when he realized he had to lock up the shop while away on his walks. What if someone actually went to buy something? A lost sale. Francis also hadn’t been back to this village since he left his mother’s house. He was essentially a stranger, and pandemic paranoia had turned people hostile to strangers ringing their doorbells.
So he just kept the print-outs at the shop window. Or gave them away to passersby and passing cars who cared to check out the shop.
Sales were very slow. One afternoon, an old man dropped by, picked up a price list, and said, “Ah, my neighbor Mr. A might want to see this. He likes ham!” He took the list with him and said he’ll be back. The following afternoon, the old man returned and took a handful this time. “I’m going out for a jog,” he told Francis. “I’m going to give these away to friends! This will give me a reason to ring their doorbells and say hi.”
Day after day, every afternoon, the old man dropped by the shop for a fresh handful of lists to distribute around the village.
He was our pandemic angel who helped Francis put food on our table again. No wings to fly around, just a pair of jogging legs.
Beach tourism came back in full swing. The lockdowns were over. People were flocking to the beaches.
We initially planned for an overnight by the beach with creature comforts — a nice AC room with a private toilet, and a swimming pool for the kids in case we didn’t feel like going outdoors. To my dismay, weekends were fully booked for properties like that, so Francis and I thought of stretching the fund we’d set aside for a fancy hotel. Why not book 3 days but at cheaper accommodations? Any fan-cooled room, teepee, or tent. The beach was a campers’ beach. It seemed a good idea to be campers.
But the camps were filling up fast, too. I couldn’t book any for 3 days. I ended up booking two rooms at different locations on the beach, an overnight each.
Of course, when getting a fan room in the summer, you manage expectations. The first property we stayed at was an off-grid, 100% solar-powered rustic campsite with shabby-chic teepee huts.
While I was feeding my son dinner at the table outside our teepee hut, a lady who’d come from the beach was rinsing the sand off herself at the water pump. She opened small talk.
She mentioned arriving at the campsite way, way earlier than expected: two hours before dawn, at 3 A.M. She had taken the bus from Manila, thinking she would arrive at daybreak, the check-in time she’d arranged with the host. Getting off the bus in the deep dark, she rode a tricycle to the campsite. With the host not picking up her calls and no one at the campsite gate to open it for her, she asked the tricycle driver to take her back to the main road and help her look for an inn or motel that charged by the hour. She wanted to catch up on sleep before heading back to the campsite after daybreak.
Let’s go back to managing expectations. That night in the campsite, our hut turned out to be too hot for us to sleep in — me, Francis, our two kids. Two solar-charged fans were not enough to cool the room. Our teepee, though Instagram-pretty, only had small windows. It felt like a hot car inside (for us, anyway; others could tolerate it, I guess).
The kids fell asleep despite the poor ventilation, but Francis and I couldn’t. Opening the door improved the air a bit, but we felt uneasy exposing ourselves like that to a forest environment we were not yet familiar with. Close to midnight, Francis and I got up to prep the car for sleeping in by inflating a bed. I carried our four-year-old son out of the hut and laid him on the car bed; his 11-year-old sister walked sleepily towards the car and took her place beside our son. Francis and I settled down on the two front seats.
Outside the camp beneath the trees, Francis and I would turn the car AC on and off. We drifted in and out of sleep while figuring out how to survive the night. I was browsing on my phone for accommodations when I fell asleep and dreamed of the lady at the water pump.
I woke up with a jolt and shook Francis awake. “Let’s drive out to the main road!”
It took us a bit of asking around to find a 24-hour hotel in the town proper. There was a spare family room with AC for 12 hours. We took it, of course! The room was huge and modern. There was a TV. The bath had a tub. All the creature comforts we initially wanted except for a pool. Because the hotel was located in town, far from the beach, the nightly rate was cheaper compared to those of the beachfront but basic huts.
On the beds (there were two!), we stretched our legs, Francis and myself and the kids. The room was deliciously cold, the sheets were crisp. We fell asleep in no time!
We checked out of the hotel the next morning, drove back to the campsite, said our goodbyes to the host and packed up our things. We were moving to the other hut we’d booked on the other end of the beach. I asked the host for the lady angel, the solo traveler who I had the pleasure of chatting with while I fed my son dinner outside our teepee hut. Her travel story helped us survive the night.
The host apologized profusely for the rough night we had, and promised to improve the conditions in the camp. As for our angel, the host said she already left. She checked out at dawn to catch an early bus to her next beach destination.
I went down an Internet rabbit hole and read something I couldn’t forget: a woman, who claims to be seeing angels, had an accident. The woman was rescued by a state trooper and attended to by various people, like paramedics.
While fighting for life in the ambulance, the woman could hardly look at the state trooper who had rescued her, because he was so bright and had huge wings. There were many people around her, but only her rescuer was like that, iridescent and winged.
She was rushed to a hospital. Soon, she became stable and was given a room. She saw very tall angels standing guard at her door.
One day, the state trooper visited her at the hospital. He was human, not like the otherworldly beings standing guard at her door. There in the hospital, the state trooper wasn’t winged or iridescent.
The state trooper told her she was squinting the whole time she was being rescued. She told him it was because he and his wings were too bright to look at. The man thought it was ridiculous. He was just doing his job. But he cried nonetheless for the unusual affirmation and appreciation he was shown by this woman who regarded him as an angel.
The story struck me with: what if there are people around us who have no idea they were actually angels, like that man?
What if you (or me?) are angels too, we just don’t know or feel like we are?
I don’t see angels myself. I keep my spiritual life very private. On matters like this, I’m fiercely skeptical yet also very open. Angelology tells us that angels are huge and protective, and you can know them by the undeniable calm and peace they bring.
I know a lot of people who are like that to me.
Like that woman, I’ve been rescued, cared for, attended to by human “angels” — or maybe, humans simply being humane — that I cannot possibly fathom how I’m still alive — physically, mentally, financially — if not for them. I cannot exist by myself. I’m being lifted by all their wings.
You who’ve been angels to me, thank you.
Here’s the link to the same story but on Medium.