Sound

Sometimes it’s snow that signals the beginning of the Christmas season. Sometimes it’s decorations, or special chocolates in the stores.

For me, when we get Mom’s old record player and box of Christmas records out from the attic, that’s when I know Christmas is coming.

It’s when John Denver and Rowlf the dog start singing about having a “merry little Christmas.” That’s when I know it’s really happening.

It’s when Mom and Nonny sit at the piano and play along with the records and I watch from the couch and we sing along, especially, this year, to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” because next time around Mom really will be a grandma and that is totally crazy.

But this year, a small but dark buzz of worry glommed onto the back of my brain, like one little seagull trying to snatch your sandwich on an otherwise blue-sky, pristine day at the beach. Like the clock Cinderella must have heard ticking down the minutes toward midnight at the best night she’d ever had. That same clock must have been tick-ticking in my head.

Because on these days we played good music and ate delicious food, and everyone was laughing and happy. There were songs coming from the record player and the piano and I wanted to listen, without any distraction, but underneath that music a worry kept counting down in my head. A baby was coming. The baby of my perfect, wonderful sister, so of course the baby would be perfect and wonderful, too, and probably also really good at piano. And maybe Mom and Nonny and the new baby would all play piano together, because of course the baby will learn how to play the piano very easily and very early. I bet she could even be a prodigy. But if I sort of can’t play the piano so great, how can I be the Best Aunt Ever to a piano prodigy?

Plus there’s something that might even be worse.

Because what if it’s the opposite? What if I fail my deal and she is born with something wrong? Wrong with her heart or her brain?

What if she is born with a missing piece?

A missing chromosome?

Would it be my fault?

Eleanor Roosevelt

We did our Historical Figure presentations the week before Christmas break. I’d been spending my lunches working by myself on my letter to give to Mr. Trent Hickman when he came to Boulder, but of course I hadn’t forgotten my presentation.

Talia went first, and read a wonderful poem she’d written about Langston Hughes, and taught us some of his style and about the Harlem Renaissance. I knew she’d wanted to do someone from Samoa, but there weren’t any in our textbook. More people missing, I guess. I told her she could find a world-changing Samoan for next semester’s presentation, and I thought it was pretty smart of Ms. Trepky to make us look outside the textbook for people to study.

Then Dustin played a video he’d made about Buffalo Bill, and even though it was silly and goofy and went on too long, he remembered to teach us actual things about Mr. Bill, like how he fought for the Union in the Civil War.