On angels

The angel tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has always intrigued me. While I  have not seen it in person (though it is on my bucket list) the photos I have seen are amazing. 
They match the picture I've carried in my mind of an angel guardian children over a bridge that hung over my Great Grandmother Godwin's bed. I always found the photo to be soothing.
Several years ago my husband taught a Sunday School class on the Biblical truth regarding angels, I learned that my long held images were all wrong.By then, enarmoured of Grandma-great's picture and the pictures I'd seen of the Met angel tree, I had developed a fondness for angel ornaments.
When I would pick out an ornament to make or choose as a souvenir I would pick an angel. Later I continued to be drawn to them, even in adulthood. I've  bid on at some charity auction and purchase from school children participating in fund raisers. I've gotten them as gifts and bought them at bazaars.
Over time I amassed quite a collection of angel ornaments. I have different shapes and sizes, many different kinds. My favorites, though,  are the paper mache ones most similar to the Met Angels.
One Christmas, I attempted to replicate the look, even putting our little nativity at the base of the tree. We enjoyed it, though it was a small and pale version of the tree it was modeled after.
On a recent Christmas, I loaned the paper mache angels to friends who work the court clerk's office as they were attempting to win a courthouse Christmas decorating competition.  The Treasurer's office who had great glittered snowflakes suspended from the ceiling and massive bows to embellish them won the contest. Still, the angels got their fair share of compliments.
At home, I hardly missed them among the decorations I used. That is when I decided my collection was more than complete.
 I should not be disappointed then, not to have found an angel ornament that I both liked and could afford when I went with my sisters to Italy earlier this year. But I am.
I just knew that in the place where angels are stuccoed and frescoed everywhere one looks there would be replicas of at least a charming little cherub to be had.
I found a carved one in one of the gift shops near the Vatican in St. Peter's Square but when the shop girl told me the price I gasped aloud, mumbled gracie and walk on.
I priced another in the Trastavere Sunday market that turned out to be part of a creche so far out of my price range that I did not even gasp.
There, in the land of Fontanni and Simonetti, I found not a single angel to bring back with me. I guess that means my collection really is complete.
Though just one more could not have hurt... could it?!