She was late.
“I shouldn’t have taken time to load the dishes in the washer,” she thought. “But how I hate to come home to a messy kitchen."
Sighing, she pulled her coat tightly around her; and in an attempt to be as inconspicuous as possible, she hurried to the sole remaining seat in the sanctuary.
The pianist began to play and the pint-size angels fluttered on state. Attired in old choir robes slightly yellowed with age, wings of tissue paper stretched over coat hangers and halos fashioned from Christmas tree tinsel, they failed to look heavenly.
“Silent night, holy night…”
It was then she noticed. From her vantage point, her view was partially blocked by the unmanned organ. But the plexiglass music stand of the gigantic instrument allowed her to witness a distorted picture of these performers from the waist up. But that wasn’t all she saw!
The plexiglass also reflected, against the creamy robes of the children, the patterns of the stained glass window directly behind her. The cross and the Bible rippled in the folds of the garments; the pinks and blues chased one another across the backdrop like rainbows in a cloudy sky.
At this one moment, in this one spot, she could see both of what was in front of her and what was behind her.
“The children have always claimed that Mom has eyes in the back of her head,” she mused. I wonder what they would think if they could see what I see.”
Her vision was certainly bright, but in no way was it calming.
“This is a Christmas drama, not a New Year’s morality play,” she muttered.
Yet caught between here and now and then and there, her thoughts drifted to the resolutions she had contemplated for the coming year.
“Isn’t this the unique position from which we are supposed to shape our resolutions?” she pondered. “As we stand poised, waiting to leap into another year, we remember the year past. The blessings. The mistakes.”
What was it that she had read earlier? Something about failures being the opposite of success. Failures do not have to be an end unto themselves, but rather, if we learn from them, they become stepping stones across the way to success.
And the blessings. She had been keeping count that year. She knew her cup runneth over. And as she looked forward into the faces of the children, all her hopes and dreams were reaffirmed.
If we let it, the past and the future come together on a New Year’s Day just like her vision in the plexiglass. That’s why it can be such a good time for resolutions.
“I resolve…” she started.
But before she complete her thought, the children tumbled off the stage and into her lap. “Were we good, Mama, were we good?”
She smiled as their gangling legs dragged the floor and their octopus-like arms encircled her neck. Somewhere along the way, she must have blinked her eyes. The babies she once held in her arms had grown into human beings.
A thought for the day written by Georgian Jack Key flashed across her mind. “Life is in session; are you present?"
She looked up and all she saw in front of her was clear plexiglass. With the future no longer beyond the modern material, what was behind had nothing to reflect against.
“Dirty dishes are a reality of the present,” she thought as she hugged her children.
“But so are they.”
She kissed the tops of their heads and began again, “I resolve…”
1972
Comentários