David Heiller
Sunday,
Dec. 17, 1989
Dear
Grandma:
We had our Christmas program at
Sunday School today. I thought you might like to hear about it. You would have
enjoyed it.
 |
| Miss Malika and her Christmas dress. |
First the good news. Mollie and Noah
said their parts without a hitch. Noah said, “Grant us now a glad new year”
just as plain as could be. Mollie said: “But a lowly manger was his place to
sleep.” The bow on her belt even stayed tied, and she only waved to me once.
The other kids were something too.
Like Matt Peterson when he said, “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was
bruised for our iniquities.” Matt said that last word correctly. He did NOT say
“inquinities”. Matt was worried about
that. When he practiced it around the Peterson home, he would say “inquinities.” Matt is the kind of kid
who could come up with a pretty funny definition for “inquinities.” But not in front of a full church.
His big sister, Connie, had the
toughest part of the pageant. She stood in front, jammed her left hand into an
imaginary pocket, looked at her feet, then straightened up, and said her bit,
four long sentences, 81 words, without a stammer. Now that was a REAL Christmas
Program part, the kind I remember when I was a kid and you were watching me.
Was I ever that good in sixth grade?
I don’t know why I like Christmas
programs so much, Grandma. Remember how you used to like to sit in the waiting
room of the parking ramp when we went shopping in LaCrosse, just to watch people
pass by? Christmas pageants are like that to me. You can watch children pass
by. Wearing new sweaters and dresses, or stuffed in double breasted suits and
red ties, or blue jeans and AAU tennis shoes. And some of those kids, like
Natalie Booker, so tiny she surely couldn’t memorize her part, yet she did, and
better than most of the others. Some with changing voices, like Jeremy
Kosloski, a 13-year-old bursting out of his clothes. Some suddenly pretty, like
Corrine Cronin in her blue dress, growing up before your eyes.
Then there’s the music. Bev Peterson
played the piano, and the notes just poured out when she did “Jesus, Name Above
All Names.” The kids sang great too. That surprised me, because sometimes
forget how well kids can sing, when they want to. Mona Sjoblom, the director of
our Christmas pageant this year, asked me to play the guitar on “Away in the
Manger,” and I gladly said yes. It was a different version, with a lovely melody
that’s just about as good as the original. Even people who grumbled about the
newfangled rendition complimented me afterward.
What a
joy it was to sit in front of those 25 kids and listen to them sing. Loud,
clear voices, not all on key mind.you, but that was all right. They haven’t
learned yet that they don’t all have perfect voices. I wish they never would.
No one in the church complained.
One voice rang out over the rest,
Joey Gibson’s. You can always pick Joe’s voice out at our Sunday School. Just
follow your ears. It cuts through the others, it climbs to the high notes and
reaches them. It tinkles like a bell on a Christmas tree, when angels get their
wings. It’s a pure voice, a beacon that mixes with the other voices to make
those four songs extra special.
Grandma, we pulled off a darn good
Christmas program again. Isaac Sjoblom and Jonathan Zuk didn’t fight like they
did in practice. Tory Johnson missed a word, but went back to the beginning and
said it perfectly. April Williams read half her part, then heaved a sigh and
looked up and said perfectly: “God sent His angel Gabriel to tell Mary that she
was to be the mother of His Son.”
 |
| Noah and Malika with cousin Sarah. Christmas, 1989. |
Time stood still for an hour, and
this crazy, busy holiday season suddenly didn’t seem quite so crazy and busy.
Even Mollie behaved. She didn’t come
down to me when I was playing the guitar, like she did in practice, three
times. And like I said, she only waved to me once, and the bow on her belt
stayed tied. She tied it herself. Guess she’s growing up too.
And after she said her part, she came
to me and sat on my lap. We hugged, and then we sang, “What Child is This?”
That was pretty close to Heaven in my book.
I guess you know all about that though.
Love,
David
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