Ever read those “My Guardian Angel” stories in magazines?   The ones where someone asks for a sign from a departed loved one and lo and behold they start finding shiny dimes everywhere, birds serenade their every move and butterflies flit about their heads in weird synchronized formation?  Have you ever asked for a sign?   Or thought you had gotten an unsolicited one?  I can remember seeing a huge black and white butterfly the day Comet passed. I had never seen one quite like it before or since.  I’m sure it was a weird coincidence though, because if he was able to come back it would mostly likely be something a little more chaotic than a butterfly.  Probably a chupacabra or something.

I was sitting on the deck yesterday thinking about my husband and sister and other family members who passed in the summer. I looked at the butterfly bush  we planted as a memorial and said out loud “where is my damn sign?” and then went back to my book.   A little later I was scouting around the house and deck looking for my little indoor cat who had decided to make a break for it when I let the dog out.  I passed a large honeysuckle bush below my living room window and noticed a wind chime was missing.   I have a lot of them in the trees around the house but I had just bought this one and hung it where I would see it every day.  It had a wine cork, silver feather and some plastic yellow bead for weight.   I liked having it close to the window because it had nice tone.. not too loud.  I looked everywhere and started to feel a little put out that someone would take it, then a little nervous. I don’t exactly live on the street and this was pretty close to my back door.  I even looked in all the other trees where I might hang wind chimes just in case I had taken up sleep walking and nocturnal redecorating. It was nowhere.  This morning when I went out to get my morning paper I did another scan. Nothing.  When I was passing by a lilac bush on the way back to the house  it. was. right. there.  Hanging in plain sight, over a large planter I had watered the night before.  It was hanging from a branch just out of my reach. I can see it from several vantage points, both inside and out.   It would be hard to miss.   So why couldn’t I see it yesterday and how did it get there?    Oh, and the yellow bead?  It’s a butterfly.  I had never noticed.

Every time things settle down there is always that one person who has to reintroduce chaos and unease into the mix and just on cue, this week of all weeks, it’s looking like another shit storm on the horizon. I am feeling unsettled and unnerved.  Maybe I moved the damned wind chime and can’t remember, or the guy mowing the lawn got tired of hitting his head.  Or maybe it is a sign that I’m not alone in this.

Either way, it made me laugh out loud there in my driveway at 7:30 a.m. in my nightgown with a windbreaker over it and a serious case of bed head.  Like the neighbors don’t already wonder…..