in our earliest days in the nicu a family member gave us this christmas ornament well before we had completely decided on odin’s nickname.

it was always falling off his radiant warming bed, which is how it acquired all the cracks that you can see if you look closely, and led to “fallen angel” and “the angel fell down on the job” jokes from the nicu staff. i was always quite sure that it’d get lost in the daily chaos, since it was so small and always falling on the floor.

but it never was lost in shuffle and in a strange way the battered angel always makes me smile a sad, slightly sentimental smile and for reasons that i can’t quite articulate makes me think of wings of desire and its “Song of Childhood “.