a Christmas quandary

Here lies a little angel, not an ordinary angel but a very special one. My parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next year and have booked an amazing river cruise though Europe to celebrate. As with many amazing trips like that it comes with an "amazing " price tag. They are doing what they can to raise money for the trip which includes a craft sale in the next couple of weeks.
Now enter the angel.

I am not sure what order to tell this tale. 

Maybe I will start like this.

We always had the same angel atop of our Christmas tree. She was the epitome of a fairy to me and childhood tales told of how she came alive to tell Santa how good you had been. Each year I coveted her, each year she was the thing I wanted to play with.

 I was a little girl who believed in fairies at the bottom of the garden. She was perfect. As I grew older she became a very important aprt of our family Christmas tradition. When I left home and had my first Christmas away I found a small doll and dressed my own fairy. 

My mum still uses the same fairy on her tree though her dress and wings have changed. A couple of years ago Mum asked me to redress the fairy and I used scraps from my wedding dress and old lace to give her a dress worthy of a fairy. It is a small and worthless plastic doll bought so many years ago from Woolworths which is treasured beyond measure between my mum and I. For some people dressing the tree is a statement of style and for us its is about the continuity through our lives.

A couple of weeks ago  mum asked me to redress an old fairy a friend had given to her to sell on the craft table. They don't take long to do and its the sort of little fiddly job I enjoy. She handed me the box and as I opened it I had a moment of complete confusion. 

There in the box is exactly the same fairy, in her old dress from Woolworths. It is not our family fairy but one exactly the same. It was so odd to see a replica of something so unique and individual to my family. Of course there were many of these dolls made but I had never seen another. 

....so now I have a quandary. Do I redress this doll and send her off into the world? Do I swap her for my own fairy, who I am quite fond of and has been with us for nearly 20 years now? I know that my childhood one will come to me one day. 

What a silly quandary to have! 

Today I have really enjoyed making sloe gin.