Do You Hear What I Hear? By Laura Oliver

I ran into Stacey at Whole Foods this week. She is my neighbor who became a massage therapist, and I am the idiot who had to learn to stop referring to her as a masseuse. It means the same thing, but for some reason, masseuse sounds creepy nowadays. Stacey is beautiful and sweet, and we rarely see each other, so we stopped to chat for a minute by frozen foods.

“Ready for company?” I asked, looking at her cart.

“Getting there. My cousin is coming for Christmas Eve. What she doesn’t know is… we’re going Christmas caroling! She’s going to hate it,” Stacey added, her guileless blue eyes shining.

“Totally hate it!”  I agreed, wanting to please but a little perplexed at Stacey’s willingness to annoy her guests.

Stacey’s husband, Cliff, wandered toward us through the ice cream selections. Seeing him, Stacie confided conspiratorially. “Cliff doesn’t know either. He’s going to REALLY hate it.” She looked gleeful, pleased with her plan, but I like Cliff, so I said, “Come sing at my house. I promise to be receptive.” And complicit in the strategy to make nice people uncomfortable, we took our carts down different aisles.

I tried caroling in my old neighborhood. There were no sidewalks, a lot of wet leaves, and most houses sat back from the road. It was dark. No one knew the words past the first verse of anything, so we got quavery and thin on the second, third, fourth, and can you believe it? fifth verses. Jumbling up syllables—coming in strong on the chorus—we didn’t have enough flashlights, and we were not good singers. With every knock on the door, I felt more like a political canvasser for the wrong party or a census taker. I mean, people were in the middle of their favorite television shows or searing the salmon for dinner. It was 32 degrees that night, so they had to either step out and freeze on their front stoops or let all their heat out for the Little Drummer Boy. A lot of people don’t know there are 21 rum pum-pum-pums in that one. Caroling was a well-intended idea but it has to be deployed selectively.

Like when I was in high school. My Girl Scout troop (stop it. We had great uniforms. We looked like WW II WACs in a good way) caroled at the Baltimore nursing home where my father was the administrative director. At least it was warm and light, and all the doors to the rooms were open. People lay in bed smiling at our radiant youthfulness–became alert at our approach. One elderly man saw us, sat up, swung his legs over the side of his mattress, and patted the sheet next to him. I wasn’t sure what to do, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but that invitation didn’t feel right. The word masseuse springs to mind. “Hark!” I sang at him, “The herald angels sing!” He kept on nodding and vigorously patting the sheet as I edged out of the room and hurried to catch up with my troop.

I grew up in a Methodist Church, and though I no longer practice any organized religion, reverence for a power greater than myself and the beauty of the rituals are embedded deep in my soul. I loved the hymns as a child, and even as a young mother of three, I sang in the church choir.

Those days are gone and although I didn’t try caroling again, caroling found me.

Five days before Christmas, I awoke to see our 4-year-old son standing next to my side of the bed, his face drained of color, platinum hair plastered to his forehead. “My elbow hurts,” he said. He hadn’t fallen, and it wasn’t swollen, but something told me this was important, so I stopped wrapping gifts and delivering crème de mint brownies that morning to take him to the pediatrician. The doctor asked a few questions, then looked at me and said simply, “You’re in trouble. Take him, right now, to the orthopedic practice across the street and get this aspirated. I’m calling ahead. I suspect you’ll be in surgery this afternoon.”

I literally carried my sick boy in my arms to the surgeon’s office, where they lay him on a table and stuck a needle directly into the now swollen joint where it hurt the most. He struggled with the fierceness of a four-year-old who doesn’t know why his mother is hurting him. I had to use all my strength to hold him down. This still makes me cry. His scream was so loud, and by necessity, my ear was so close, I thought I’d be permanently deaf, and that was fine with me. Take my hearing, take my sight, take anything you want.

As my doctor had predicted, an infection had lodged in my son’s elbow. Should it travel to his brain or heart, the results would be “unacceptable.” The only remedy was surgery. “I’m not ready!” my son yelled from his wheelchair as they took him away.

None of us was ready. None of us ever are.

He came through the surgery fine, but he didn’t get well. Day by day, we sat by his side, slept by his side, as IV antibiotics failed to extinguish the heat of his fever and Christmas approached. I brought decorations for his room. Bought him a squirrel puppet in the hospital gift shop.

On Christmas Eve, we were sitting in a near-silent hospital. Everyone who could go home had gone home. Our seven-year-old daughter was waiting for Santa’s arrival that night at our house with my mother, where the tree was decorated and stockings hung. I was trying to make Christmas happen simultaneously everywhere–for everyone—that’s the promise, right? Gifts for all who believe? All over the world simultaneously?

Then, from very far away, so faint at first, you might have imagined a choir of angels, the distant strains of “Silent Night” floated closer and closer, becoming more and more distinct. Round yon virgin, mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild. Muffled footsteps in the hall, and a cluster of carolers appeared. Benevolent strangers who could have been at home with their families, enjoying Christmas Eve supper by the hearth, but instead stood smiling in the hospital doorway of a very sick boy and two scared and exhausted parents.

“Sleep in heavenly peace,” the choir of angels sang softly, “sleep in heavenly peace.”

That night, that very night, when love is passed one to another throughout the world, in a story that defies the laws of physics but inspires the laws of love, the fever broke.

When the sun rose, in dawn’s redeeming grace, we went home.

 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.