December 9, 2005
Friday 

We woke this morning to the predicted six or eight inches of snow. The paper carrier I wrote about on this very day last year was just arriving when I looked out from my upstairs study. I watched her get out of her car and step her heavy boots through the light but deep powder and plant the orange bags upright in my driveway and my neighbor’s. I had to use a walking pole for stability when I went out to get the paper and brush off my sweatpants completely when I got back from the excursion, lest I find my legs and ankles getting cold and damp as the tracked-in snow lost its sparkle and turned to slush.

I’d planned to get so much done today, but I spent the whole of it feeling anxious and distracted. Most of my party prep lies half-finished in different areas, the dining table still spread from the debris of preparing the invitations, the fireplace display still in its crate.

The fireplace display looks to the casual observer like another crèche, since it has a stable, a star, and lots of pieces from the Fontanini line of figurines. But instead of the nativity story, it illustrates Gian-Carlo Menotti’s short opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors. And repeating myself yet again, I wrote about that last year, too, recounting the plot and giving a critique of the performance.

I look for an Amahl every year.  Though I have two different audio recordings and a murky copy of the original broadcast, I like to witness a live performance. It helps deepen my feelings of preparation for hope reborn, and since I missed the high school choral concert on Wednesday, seeing this Amahl was especially important.

The performance was at a church in Lancaster, a town about forty minutes from where I live. I’d planned to go down in the afternoon, make a day of it. I could go to the Lenox outlet nearby and get more paper products that match my Holiday pattern china. I could go up to Lynn’s college (ten minutes from the church), maybe take her to an early dinner. But she was busy this weekend hosting recruits for next year’s field hockey team, and she insisted she didn’t need her snow boots, which I’d found in the garage beside mine.

So I didn’t leave until after dark. The roads were all cleared, just some slush on neighborhood streets and the ramps onto the interstate. A farm along Route 283 has its silo draped with lights and a star on top so it looks like a Christmas tree. That was an unexpected festive touch.

The performance was, well, adequate. (If you read last year’s report, you’ll know that I can demand a lot of a local production.) The mother had the strongest voice and the best acting. Amahl’s mother should be young, but when I talked to her in the narthex after the performance I thought she looked even younger up close and out of character. At one point as she crossed the stage area her hair caught the end of some straw that was hanging from a rafter, and it trailed after her. She had to spend several lines of a duet with Amahl coordinating her efforts to extricate herself from it with the gestures that went with the music. She and Amahl both had some trouble with the door, which wouldn’t easily open to reveal the kings standing outside.

Someone should have sat in the house during dress rehersal (or at least sat in the row I occupied) and seen that the light for the pianist needed a shield. Amahl had a good voice and was suitably thin (they’re poor — a robust Amahl just doesn’t look right). But he had a tendency to overact, and his well-barbered blond hair gave him too Nordic a look for my tastes. And of the kings, alas, one of them was not black again this year. At least they corked him up some, but when he stretched his neck you could see that makeup and wardrobe hadn’t worked it into all the folds of his jowls. And his very conventional American businessman’s haircut detracted from his appearance as a first century Middle Eastern wizard.

But I cried anyway, during “Have You Seen a Child?” and at the end, when Amahl runs back for a last embrace with his mother.

One of the tasks I’d planned for today was setting up the Amahl scene in the fireplace cavity. But when I opened the crate, the hills of Judea weren’t in there. I usually pile boxes in the cavity and drape them with some muslin and burlap strewn with straw and moss. Then I place some of the shepherds and animals among the folds, as if they are in a procession down out of their fields, following Amahl to visit the kings. When I couldn’t find the cloth and the bag of straw and moss, I remembered that last year I decided that the whole thing looked shabby after about ten years of service, and I’d planned to get new stuff for this year.

This depression that keeps hanging around grabbed at me then and made going out to procure new material for the hills beyond the widow’s hut seem an overwhelming task. I closed the crate and left for the performance with the intention of just skipping all that this year.

Emily! Emily! Michael! Bartholomew!
How are your children and how are your sheep?
Katherine! Katherine! Christopher! Babila!
Give me your hand come along with me!

It was the shepherds whose energetic singing snapped me out of myself and showed me what joy there is in being part of a community. I sang all the way home.

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