Norm Hacking's Prose
Race Track Hack:
"About Angels"
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Taxi News,
October 2003, p.15
© Norm Hacking 2003
Every so often, an angel lands right on your shoulder, so you gotta keep paying attention. You might absently think you're brushing off a little dandruff, and end up blowing the entire miracle!
I'm pretty sure I've unwittingly brushed off my share of angels in the last 53 years. Too bad you can't go back again. But that's life…
And, let's face facts. Angels can be tricky.
The whole wings and harp thing is pretty much for the storybooks (and the Philadelphia Cream Cheese ads). No angels I know of ever dress the part.
Like this one angel I know, Peter M.. The closest he gets to wings is when they come bearing hot sauce - and he insists on ordering them by declaring to the waitress, "I'll have the dead bird parts, please."
He always plays a mean guitar, and lap steel, and one winter when I'd had my heat shut off (I was financially challenged) he found out about it. After he met with some fellow angels in a corner bar, the heat somehow came back on! Miracle!
Or, there is the angel Shirley G., both friend and manager, whose wings deflect the slings and arrows of outrageous music biz fortune from me. She is always on my shoulder, and her melodies encourage my artistic voice whenever it falls silent.
Some angels come disguised as family members. They make especially good angels because they bring to the dance a lot of angel type stuff - love, and support, and lessons to be learned, and enough forgiveness to fuel a whole lot of second chances.
My grandparents, John and Ella Karach, my Uncle John Karach Jr., and my number one angel, my mother Kathy O., put up with a lot of decidedly unangelic behavior on my part over the years. Yet, to this day, I can feel their invisible wings wrap around me when earthly storms blow cruel and cold.
And, as for real friends, how many of them silently watch over us, root for us, listen to our sad stories, try to protect us, not only from the world, but from ourselves?
They share our sorrow, and join us in celebration, and the music they play for us means we are never alone.
As for the lovers, well, sometimes they actually do float on clouds! They have given me courage, and passion, and dreams, where there might only be cowardice, and lost purpose, and despair.
It takes strength to find and keep your faith. Everybody wants to get to heaven. Trouble is, people think heaven is somewhere that you "get to", and that the way to do it is to cast righteous judgment upon their fellow travelers.
Then, when it's time to hit the ol' pearly gates, they figure they'll just push right in there past everybody else.
I suspect the joke may be on them.
Maybe heaven is like success, it's not a destination, but a journey. Every day, if everyone could just get past wanting more, and needing to feel bigger and better than the next guy… if we could stop being afraid of the differences in people - if we really started rooting for our fellow travelers… well, we wouldn't have to wait for heaven, we'd already be there.
Angels know there's no reason to fly too high up looking for God. The sun will only melt those wings. And that can get messy.
Besides, God's in the music, and the music is all around us, right here on Earth.
So, here's a good thought for Thanksgiving: Life is a concert, sometimes loud, sometimes so very hard to hear. Thank you to these fine worldly angels for playing the music…
…And, one last thought: I'm trying to write a song for a long ago angel, who's face comes back to me now, when I remember the angels of my life. The chorus goes:
"With you I'd get excited
About every crazy thing
A Scrabble game,
The smell of rain
A card the postman brings…
You gave me wings!"
Webmaster's Note: See the list of Norm's on-line lyrics, poetry and prose, including other Taxi News columns.
Taxi News website is www.taxinews.com with Norm's current monthly column at www.taxinews.com/racetrackhack.html and a few archived issues in .pdf format at www.taxinews.com/archives.html (check the last few pages of each issue). Taxi News is a monthly publication with news and commentary on Toronto's taxi industry and is available by subscription or free at distribution points.