Hearing the Singing

 Around this time every year, early November, I break out the Christmas music.  It's hard sometimes to even wait that long, because I love me some Christmas music, but I make myself.  And every year, also around this time, I offer to sing Christmas songs to Janey.

Janey doesn't have me sing to her as much as I used to.  Frankly, I'm not exactly a great music talent (unlike her older brother William, who truly is, or what I suspect Janey might have been in alternative universe), and Janey is not one to suffer fools or out of tune people gladly.  But this one time in the year, she is excited enough that Christmas music season is back to let me sing, and so today, she gave me one of her priceless smiles after my singing offer.

To start the Christmas music season,  I sang "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear".  Long ago, my beloved grandfather told me it was his favorite carol, and that has stayed with me.  But apparently the words to it haven't, quite as well.  I sang the first half of the first stanza, up the harps of gold, and blanked out.  Janey didn't seem to mind.  She quickly got back on her phone to watch more of Toy Story 4, for the truly about 100,000th time.  But after just a minute, she put down the phone, and perfectly, without missing a word or a note, picked up where I had left off..."Peace on the earth, Good will to man, from heaven's all gracious King, the world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing"

I am not religious, an agnostic at best.  But hearing that, the words, from my daughter, someone who the world might see as severely intellectually disabled (and not wrongly, for in many ways, she is), someone who at times can scream for many hours in a row and stay awake for night after night, someone who just in the past few days has had a few crises...moments like that can stop me in my tracks.

I always plan to write here more.  Sharing with those of you living lives that parallel ours has kept me going these many years.  But for so many reasons, it's harder now.  For example, as I sat down to write here, my father called to discuss a medical issue with my mother.  Her Lewy Body Dementia has been a challenge and a scary wake-up call to how hard it all can be to balance.  I often feel overwhelmed, and when I think about next August when Janey turns 22 and we no longer have school---I feel terrified.  

But I will continue to share moments like these, good or bad.  Let's hope for always more good than bad.