Christmas

December 25, 2007

Messiah on the CD: “For he is like a refiner’s fire. . . .” Drinking chocolate out of the enormous mug my sister gave me for Christmas. I hope the taste of soap is my imagination.

At Mountain Java yesterday I broke the writing curse–the not-writing curse–which plagued me since the beginning of vacation, which I realize is not long as dry spells go, but long for me. Even in the white rush I noticed the room around me, how it was curiously filled with parents and children, and most particularly infant children. One family had two boys, about five and about three, I would guess, and a baby sister who could not have been more than a week old, and looked like a preemie on TV. The mother was doing something, rather frantically, on a laptop, and I had the sense that the expedition to the café was so the family could be together, officially, in a safe place, while she got this urgent matter attended to. Dad was wildly handsome, with the pale green eyes which make people look like beautiful aliens. The older boy flirted with me until we spoke. He was a gap-toothed little elf, with that strange, knowing charisma which very young children sometimes have. He was carrying a stuffed leopard which was a present he was allowed to open before Christmas day. His name is Connor. I told him I was soon going to a country named Ireland where many boys were named Connor, and he found that fascinating. He held his little sister–her name is Nova–for a while, in all the wrong ways, juggling her around rather roughly while mom tapped away. I said nothing because Nova seemed totally at peace with the treatment. When asked a question, Connor took a while to reply. I realized that he was doing one the courtesy of really considering the question, and giving the true answer. “Courtesy” was a living presence in his demeanor, the natural courtesy which come from a child’s sweetness and is so soon lost from so many of us to exhaustion and cynicism. Later, in church, when we were asked to pray for others, I prayed for Connor, that nothing would come to rob him of that sweetness, directness, courtesy. I observed that I wished I’d ordered hot chocolate as he did, instead of the nasty coffee. He said, “Why did you order coffee?”
“Oh, it was there.”
Pointing to his cup, “Hot chocolate was there too.”

I wonder if I was ever Connor.

Two Christmas Eve services at church, and then home, skipping late night parties because too many systems were failing. I think if I had decorated a tree I would feel more Christmas-y, but this is well. I will rejoice at the New Year in Ireland.

The “young people,” present and former singing scholars, plus Will Bryant, sang “In the Bleak Mid-Winter,” and the beauty of it went beyond the beautiful singing. Careers starting, lives at the golden door. The Lord has many times heard my prayer to become the Covering Cherub, a prayer which I renewed on Christmas Eve, longing to take all under my wing, to turn aside the evils of the world, to build the battlements of crystal.

Christmas breakfast with Douglas and Amy and Luke and Alexi and Eli.