Angels or Devils

Last week I took the boys to JC Penney for a photo shoot. Great Granny Charlotte had asked me for some pictures and none of the ones I have seem quite right. I put it down to the difficulties in taking good indoor photos with my digital camera. It wants to go to flash all the time and that washes everyone into startled deer expressions or paparazzi ghosts. I digress.

Here are some of the pictures from the photo shoot. I think they are lovely. However, an experience there reminded me of the different perspective you have once your child has serious health concerns.

The walls of the studio are covered in portraits. Many of them have children posed with some captions underneath. Some have them posing with bears and fake Christmas trees. Some have them wearing wings.

I was looking at one portrait of a little girl with ringlets with a background of wings and clouds. It was captioned "My Angel, Marie". Among those whose children have been in hospital and certainly on all the online communities, an angel is a child who has died. People write something like "Mother to brian (8) and ^o^ angel Claire. I felt sad for a moment thinking of the little girl who had died. The next picture had four children in fuzzy clouds "our 4 little angels". Suddenly, it dawned on me that the child wasn't dead!




I was pleased. Still, it left me feeling very superstitious. I would not let her make Wren into an angel or do any fuzzy clouds. The one of Wren in the stars is okay although I was a bit disturbed when Heather (the babysitter) said "he looks like an angel".

No, he does not. He looks like an earthbound troll. He is.