By JEFFERSON WEAVER

I always feel like I’m cheating when I write this column.

I don’t like to write about the same thing more than once or twice, but several of my faithful readers have already asked if I’d be writing this column for Christmas this year.

If you’re looking for biting commentary, go somewhere else today. You won’t find any of my arguably twisted humor or roundabout logic below.

Instead, I want to tell you about an angel in a trash can.

The angel was found by a strong, stubborn woman named Lois. She was raising four children on her own. Times were tight.

Lois was worried about having Christmas presents for them. She worked one full-time and two part-time jobs, although work was hard to find in a resort town in mid-winter, when the north wind froze parts of the Potomac and a light snow made everyone hope for a white Christmas.

Most of the town was shuttered and dark; it made the town sadder in many ways. The once-grand hotels were frowzy and rundown. One by one the old houses, the stores, the boardwalk and pavilion she’d known as a bobby-soxer were fading away.

A handful of businesses stayed open through the winter – there were two grocery stores (she worked in one), a hardware store, a department store (where she also worked part time) and a clothing store for the wealthier folks. They were all decorated for Christmas, and Lois enjoyed seeing the lights, even though the ice and snow was cold through her stockings and the heavy socks pulled up almost to the hem of a homemade skirt.

Her other part-time job was around the corner from the fire station, at a little one-horse weekly newspaper. She was trying desperately to learn how to write “real” news; the owner let her cover only the “women’s news,” which she hated writing.

The editor was also divorced; he lived alone up the river in an old farmhouse with a beagle named Driver. He was a skinny, lonely man who wore sweatshirts under his suits to stay warm. He knew and loved her children, who reminded him so much of his own. Lois knew he had gifts for her kids, and she wondered how she could afford to give him something in return, something that wouldn’t seem forward.

Lois cut down an alley toward the back of the department store, taking a longer route but one that would avoid some of the wind off the bay. The alley went between a line of fading summer houses and the business district.

Her mother had invited the editor over to share supper with the family one night. Lois wanted to pick up a few more small decorations for the big Christmas tree, and maybe the ingredients for an applesauce cake. She thought the cake would be a good gift for the editor, and maybe it would help him put on some weight.

She was still thinking about Christmas presents when she spotted the angel in the trash can.
The old doll didn’t look like much of an angel; it was a china doll thrown out with some other junk from one of the old homes. The paint was cracked, much of the hair was gone, and its legs were gone. The doll lay embarrassed in the trashcan, a body of stained white cloth stuffed with cotton.

The woman stopped for a moment, knocked the snow off the doll and quickly shoved it into her pocketbook, worried someone might think she was rooting through trash cans.

At the department store, she bought a dollar’s worth of decorations with her week’s lunch money, along with some lace, gold embroidery floss, and tiny pearl buttons. The manager happily agreed to let her work some more hours through Christmas.

That night she used the lace and a scrap of old silk to make a dress for the angel. The floss made a tiny halo, and tinfoil and cardboard made a perfect set of wings. She wove a loop into the back of the dress to hang the angel on the tree.

She also made the cake for the editor, and had something for her mother and the children with the extra hours at the store.

But the angel was a gift to herself.

She married the editor a little over a year later, and they had a son. For decades, her family always knew the Christmas tree was finished when Lois hung the angel.

Even when Parkinson’s and dementia made it hard, Mother hung the angel to signify the tree was complete.

The angel was misplaced on the first holiday after my mother died, but Miss Rhonda found it at the last minute and made sure Mother’s angel was on our tree.

Each year, I think I will send the angel to my sisters Becky, or Sharron so they can tell their grandchildren about the angel. They remember the year Mother made the angel. I fear the angel might get lost in the over-decorating which helps both of them get in the Christmas spirit.

Next year, I think. I just can’t quite turn the angel loose yet. It’s hard to turn your back on a tradition.

There’s another tradition at our house, one I’m sure many of you share. We always watch Jimmy Stewart’s movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” somewhere along the line during the season.

A couple of times in that movie, someone will repeat the old saying about an angel getting its wings every time a bell rings.

That may or may not be the case – but I can guarantee that sometimes only a mother cam see an angel in a trash can.