I've always loved their music, since I was a little girl. It was my Aunt Suzanne who gave Mom the Christmas Live! CD years ago. It quickly became a favorite. Every year, armed with a bag of gingersnaps and packets of apple cider, Mom and I would trim the tree to the rousing sounds of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and Angels We Have Heard on High, as well as the sweetness of Carol of the Birds. When they played those songs Tuesday night, I was thrilled. It was a beautiful experience, full of memories. But there was one song in particular that made me cry; even as I'm listening to it now, I have to dab my eyes a little.
It was many years ago that my mother's mother, my Mimi, attended Midnight Mass with her parents. At the parish of St. Boniface in Ft. Smith, the "German Church," as it was called, because it had been built of near-eternal limestone blocks and eternal love by the German immigrant population of the town, it wasn't uncommon to sing most if not all of the songs in German. One that they performed every year was an old, old carol, Stille Nacht.
Even when it wasn't Christmas, my Great Grandpa Bender would sing it as a lullaby to his children, especially his youngest daughter, his "Little Miss." My Mimi.
She in turn would sing it (in English) to her four children when they were young.
My favorite lullaby when I was growing up was Silent Night. Even now I can close my eyes and remember her voice, soft and low, as she sang me to sleep, rubbing my back lovingly.
Two Christmases ago I had the privilege of singing Stille Nacht to my Mimi, in German, as she would've heard it back then. She cried and hugged me close, "It sounds just like when Daddy sang it."
And so, I cried Tuesday night. They were tears of love and joy. In this past year, I've moved into an apartment with a friend of mine. I've completed a year of college. It feels strange to have been on this earth for nearly two decades. It feels strange not to have my mother right down the hall. I held her hand and leaned on her shoulder, and smiled through the tears.
The gingersnaps are homemade now. The cider is mulled. And the Christmas tree looks much more elegant now than it did covered in my kindergarten projects. Things change. They may be for better, they may be for worse, they may just be for the sake of change. But if we don't dive into them with the knowledge that God knows what He's doing throwing them at us, we're only hindering ourselves.
My mother and I are separated by a fifteen minute drive. My Mimi and I are separated by three hours on the highway. My Mimi and her beloved Daddy, who I pray I will someday meet, are separated by decades and distances man cannot measure. But it's alright. We will always have Christmas.
And we will always have Stille Nacht.
