voic­es raised in song

The Christ­mas fes­tiv­i­ties at school were sim­ply love­ly. The majesty! The accom­plish­ment. The sound of many, many lit­tle girls cough­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly! And the dump truck and street clean­er busi­ly at work out­side the stained-glass win­dows. Such are the accou­trements of an urban hol­i­day celebration.

Miss Leslie clev­er­ly sug­gest­ed that we sit up high, in the gal­leries above the pews, and it was a rev­e­la­tion. Not for us the cran­ing of necks, to catch the occa­sion­al glimpse of our child. We got to see her the whole time! She played her vio­lin, she sang in Eng­lish, in Latin, in French! All the songs that had been get­ting a lit­tle tire­some, a lit­tle repet­i­tive heard over the whir of the food proces­sor or the run­ning of bath water, took on a whole new dimen­sion in the grav­i­ty the church, and com­ing from 130 throats. They were all so well-behaved, even the minute lit­tle Low­er Kinder­garten gulls whose only trans­gres­sions were the occa­sion­al swing­ing foot or wav­ing hand, to an old­er sis­ter. They sang “It’s a Baby!” with great enthu­si­asm, but per­haps not the grav­i­tas of the upper grades and their gui­tar, recorder, flute and vio­lin per­for­mances. I passed out kleenex­es to my moth­er in law and to Susan, who sat next to me, but no one blubs quite as much as I do. I tried my best to be dig­ni­fied, and spent some qual­i­ty time star­ing at Sam’s new baby cra­dled on her chest. What a nice time of year to have a small baby. 

Mrs D read a les­son, and you could hear a pin drop. Those gulls are ter­ri­fied of her! And Isabelle’s moth­er read, as Chair of the Par­ents’ Cir­cle, and the head gull and deputy head gull read, very impres­sive­ly. The Rev­erend Who­ev­er (I sim­ply can nev­er remem­ber his name) gave a very nice prayer, to the accom­pa­ni­ment of the con­struc­tion site out­side, and then we all crushed out the door, los­ing Sophia and her par­ents in the mean­time and caus­ing some minor pan­ic as to whether or not her par­ents had gone ahead to our house, and Sophia had been left at the church. But as we walked back to the school with Mrs D, it was hard not to feel that all was right with the world. She put her arm around Avery’s shoul­der and praised her vio­lin play­ing, and we praised the incred­i­ble organ­i­sa­tion that went into the whole hour and a half long event. And who knew Miss Leslie played the bass? She was dressed in her usu­al whim­si­cal, indi­vid­ual fash­ion, with a gauzy flow­ered skirt peep­ing beneath her pink tweed coat with a leop­ard col­lar! And knee-length boots. 

We came home with Sophi­a’s fam­i­ly and tucked into cham­pagne and tea sand­wich­es: duck pate, roast pork and dress­ing, egg may­on­naise, smoked salmon and cream cheese, and a sand­wich of my own design: sliced plum toma­toes with but­ter and cilantro pesto! Pret­ty good, if I do say so myself.

Right now, I’m just back from The Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Horse Show at Olympia, which I’ll tell you more about lat­er (plus an incred­i­ble soup recipe of my own design), but John’s par­ents kept Avery at the show and John and I can have… a date! What shall we do? I know, a spicy din­ner out. Maybe Deya? We’ve always had so much fun there.