A Visit from Saint Nicholas

December 7, 2008

Chill dark morning of a dark month. DJ and I went to hear mezzo Denyce Graves at the Civic center last night. It is a vast, un-welcoming, sound-flattening space, but with her sparkling stage presence she managed to make it feel intimate, like a recital around the piano in the living room. The program was heavily French, and included the definitive, heartbreaking interpretation of “Sweet Little Jesus Boy.” Graves was not in the best voice of her life, but her technique and personality was such that not one person in a hundred noticed, and I wouldn’t have had I not been sitting with a musician. Bier Garden afterward, bad drinks, bad food, forgetful service, but the merriest drunks and best street view in the city.

Lessons and Carols at All Souls, a surprisingly sweet service. Stood beside Abigail with her crystal voice.

Sunday evening. Renaissance dances on the CD. Did my gig as Saint Nicholas at Sunday School breakfast this morning. In some ways this is the easiest public acclaim I get in a year, all those smiling and astonished faces, though I hedge it about with grudgingness. I grumble about it so people think it’s onerous and no one tries to take it away. Isn’t that amazing? Ludicrous? Our lives are so creased and crisscrossed with secret strategies and invisible terrors. . . .

DJ ignores a call from his mother as we’re getting into the car. I try to remember the last time my mother called me, and am panicked because I cannot. I think I remember her voice on the phone. Did she call me? Was I so sour about such things she waited for me to call? I don’t remember. Sunday nights I pick up the phone to call dad, because that’s when he expected a call from me. Did I call mother to chit-chat, ever? I don’t remember.

I don’t like the way things turned out. I was not supposed to be so lonely. I was not supposed to sit bolt upright at the keyboard, thunderstruck, remembering, not remembering, wondering what to hold on to now in the great, dark and descending swirl.