The sound of light

There is a single candle in the center of the room, and a few notes floating from a harp in the corner. Before my eyes adjust to the gloom, I think it is the usual accompanist, and can only make out which chairs are empty or taken, but not the faces. When Number One walks past with a candle, I realize that it is Teacher Jenny, his old preschool teacher, come home to roost in a new guise. I wonder what she is thinking, for it is she who introduced us to this contemplative festival of light as we head into the darkest season of the year.

The first year was in a tiny, cramped living room in the house that doubled as our nascent school assembly room. The spiral of pine boughs couldn’t have been more than a few feet across, and the children walking it were small. I recall the collective gasp when Little Annie bent too close to the flame and singed her hair, and the fleet spring of her teacher, who extinguished both fears and fire with a tight hug. I remember the year when we spilled into a Sunday school next door, with no harp, for Jenny had left the nest: her replacement was perched on a box in the corner with her flute, an angel-like Pan in her impish stature.

I recall the first time I saw this hall, and how I envisaged the spiral in front of me even on that bright spring day. It was clear to me that the space longed for this warm path. There was the year we put down sheets underneath, afraid that we would have to shampoo out sap, since we did not yet own the place.

I watch them now, these children. I have watched these preschoolers turn into young children, then older ones, and now I see a group of willowy almost-women with real curves, not-quite-men becoming more gangly with every step of their oversized puppy feet. When it is my turn, I want to linger, for the path is littered with treasures at every turn: a wooly gnome, a fern frond, a polished stone, a knitted ginger cat.

When the last candle is lit, the harp fades away, and our collective light fills the void. No one makes as to leave, no children fidget or cough. The silence radiates around us as we breathe in the warm glow. We fill ourselves with this light, and head home in the biting cold, ready to face the dark.