The Angel of the Nopal

A story my mother told me.

     My mother's early years were spent in southern Bexar County, Texas. Today the area is growing. There is a sprawling neighborhood,  a car plant, and two colleges in what was once ranches and chaparal. I remember back in the 1960s, it was mostly ranch land. When my mother was a child, it was surely even less developed. 

     She said she was 5 or 6 when she wandered away from her home. So this would put it around 1946 or 47. It was likely a warm day as she wandered through the south Texas brush, cactus, and mesquite trees. When children start exploring, they become focused at the task at hand and pay little mind to where they're going or how they should get back.

     This was probably the case with my mother. She was wandering through the chaparral and then noticed she couldn't see her house through the dry grassland. 

     She recalled panicking and crying because she realized that she was lost. That's when she witnessed something she described as possibly supernatural. She remembered a beautiful woman rising from behind a nopal cactus. The woman never spoke a word but raised her arm and pointed into the distance. 

     My mother started walking in the direction that the woman pointed to. She looked back but the woman was gone. She continued to walk and then saw her house. She was no longer lost.

     She didn't recognize the woman but instead described her as an angel. 

     That story and image stayed with me all of my life. A few days ago, I asked my AI assistant to generate the angel of the cactus. The first one looked like a Catholic painting. I also wanted a tattoo verson in the style of a coat-of-arms. 

     Long ago, I created a personal coat-of-arms that included a nopal, but never applied it.

 

     The Latin motto on the angel shield translates to "I will show you the way". The shield with the anchor says, Ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς, which means "Either with it [your shield], or on it". It is the phrase used by a Greek mother when she sends her son off to war. It means to return with your shield as a hero, or be returned carried on your shield as a dead hero. You do not return without the shield, as it denotes cowardice.