I went to Catholic schools from first through 12th grades, so I did hear about angels along the way. In first grade, there were Christmas programs, and we little kids sang carols that had angels in them. Later that month, the high school girls put on a program, and I think that's when I first heard the carol 'the first Noel, the angels did say -'. So beautiful, I felt trembly chills.

Somewhere in elementary school, we learned about God's archangels, and how Lucifer and God had a tiff. Lucifer was an archangel, but God and he parted ways, and things went downhill from there. I'm not the only kid who worried about Lucifer being punished for so long and wondered why he and God couldn't just make up and be friends again.

I can't say I had any personal angel experiences as a kid, although I was an angel in one or two Christmas plays, wearing wire covered in aluminum foil for a halo. Once, as an adult in the 1980s, I was reading the daily newspaper, and there was a brief article about an astronaut who thought he saw gigantic, ethereal beings on one orbital trip, but I never could find references to this again and I wonder if I actually read that or not. Wouldn't we have heard about it again at some point?

I liked the angel in the Jimmy Stewart movie, 'It's a Wonderful Life' - he wasn't particularly ethereal - a little gruff really.

A little kid once told me that when her grandmother was very ill, she got up in the night and looked in on her grandma. The girl's mother was in the room, keeping watch and they were the only people in the house. As the child returned to her own room, there was an angel standing on the stairs, she said.

I've given more thought to angels after meeting the little girl.