A Gift Remembered

After seeing Santa at Chick-fil-A today and then going to a toy store, our mood on the drive home was festive. We started talking about what makes Christmas memorable when you're little. The thing that's bittersweet to me now as a parent is that I work so hard to make Christmas wonderful for the children, thinking that the activities that we repeat will become traditions, making them that much more fun and memorable in the future. And in some ways, they do, but in other ways, I can look back on my own childhood and most of the Christmases all just blur together into one big happy memory in my mind. And of course, this is a good thing. Obviously, I'm grateful that I have happy Christmas memories instead of sad ones from my childhood, but it's just a little disheartening to know that much of the work I'm doing now will basically be washed away as my children's memories all forge into blurs in each of their own minds.

So this was what we talked about in the car, and we decided that unless you do something really wild and crazy for Christmas, or if there was a bad memory at Christmas, you do remember those things. Or, alternatively, if there was one super special gift, like the epic Red Rider BB gun in A Christmas story, then that's hard to forget, too.

One of my own "most memorable gifts" for Christmas was given to me when I was 15. It's funny, too, because it wasn't something I directly asked for. Oh, I'd dropped hints along the way, of course, but it was so far out of reach, and I knew it was so far out of reach, I'd never seriously asked for it as a present. But it was given to me anyway.

In August of 1995, my paternal grandfather, a teller of great stories and known to us as "Papa," passed away after multiple stays in the hospital. He had suffered from poor health for several years after a debilitating stroke, but it was still a shock to all of us when we learned the news. When my dad got off the phone with my uncle in those crazy hours of scrambling to organize a funeral, he asked me and my sisters if we wanted to participate in any way.

To be honest, I'm not sure how exactly I ended up volunteering, but somehow it was decided that I would play a hymn on my flute at the funeral. I really don't remember if my parents suggested it, or if I did. I also don't remember being particularly nervous that day in late August. I just wanted to do a good job and not embarrass myself or my family in that cavernously large Baptist church in Newport News, Virginia. I played the hymn "In the Garden," and my cousin, Jim, sang "Amazing Grace." His big tenor voice filled the room so much better than the sound of me and my thin little flute. The hymn we'd selected had more meaning for my parents and my grandmother than for me, and it was not too hard for me to get through playing it. I’m sure my fingers shook when I played, but they always did that when I had to perform a solo.

Within the following month, on the other side of the family, my great aunt passed away. My grandmother, Mitty, was heartbroken at the loss of my Aunt Bess. Not only was she losing her younger sister, with whom she'd shared a close but rather turbulent childhood in the Depression Era, but even in their grandmotherly years, they lived just down the road from each other: she had lost her best friend.

My mom received a call from Mitty, again, in those chaotic days after the passing, but before the funeral. In the course of the planning, my grandmother was calling with a question. Since I'd done a nice job with that hymn at Papa's funeral, could I possibly…? Would I consider…? And so, I did. I played the same hymn that fall at my Aunt Bess' funeral that I had at my grandfather's funeral.

As Christmas approached that year, I remember one day being in the living room of our house on Wildwood Lane. I was sitting at the piano bench and practicing my flute. My dad stuck his head around the corner of the doorway…it's funny how I can picture him coming around the corner like that, and he abruptly stated, "Annie, that sounded really pretty. I think it's time we get you a new flute."

My eyes had opened wide. My mother had pursed her lips. Was he serious? A new flute?! Of course I'd always talked about one day, possibly, maybe, stepping up into the world of solid-silver-headed, open-holed flutes, but I didn't think it would actually ever happen. Plus, we'd had a wedding that year in our family; he couldn't be serious.

I was too stunned initially to get my hopes up after that conversation, but perhaps I did get them up a little. My dad wasn’t one to make declarations like that and then let it go. It was as if his mind had already been made up. Over the next few weeks, I remember him asking me questions in the office of his store and subsequently making phone calls to various local music stores.

"What kind was it you said you wanted? Gammenheart?"

"No, Dad. It's Ge-MEIN-hardt."

Later on, perhaps a week or so before Christmas, when he made a not-so-secret outing one evening after dinner to a music store on the other side of the county, I was ready to jump up and down like a kindergartener. But fifteen-year-old girls don't do that…at least in front of their parents, anyway.

I'm surprised they even bothered to wrap it. When my mom handed me a heavy, rectangular package on Christmas morning, I knew what it was well before opening it. But I was still surprised and more than a little amazed. In my head, a new flute was as lofty a present as a new convertible or a week in Tahiti. It was one of those things you dream about, but you don't actually get.

When I unzipped the outer case and then flipped open the locks on the inner case and lifted the lid, it was simply stunning. It was exactly what I'd wanted. My mom used to tell me I had "champagne tastes," and she wasn't kidding: Gemeinhardt. Open-holed. With the extra key on the end to go down to a low B, which you never actually need, but it's nice to know it's there anyway. With a solid silver head piece. And a silver mouthpiece (not a gold one…I knew girls at school who said they sounded better, but I thought they just looked tacky). 

When I think about it all these years later, it surprises me perhaps even more that everything unfolded the way that it did. My parents were not extravagant people, and yet somehow my father decided that it was time to buy me a new, crazy-expensive flute. Looking back on it, I can put the pieces together and see that what I had done that year by playing at those funerals was, in my mind, not that big a thing. But in my parents' minds, it was a big deal. It had honored them, and it had honored the memory of the family member they had lost.

But still, my reward was so much greater than what the cost of it had been to me.

As I thought about this today, I suddenly couldn’t help but make the connection…isn't that just like the True Gift we celebrate from the very first Christmas? God gave us the most precious and the most costly gift, and the only cost to us is that we just say, "Yes, Lord. I accept your gift. I'll follow You instead of me." When you consider what it cost our Creator to come to this dark and desperate world, putting on the limitations and fragile shell of a covering that we call "human flesh," and then die an agonizing death in order to make Himself a sacrifice for us, anything we could possibly do in response is just, well, small.

This story about the flute, which I honestly hadn't thought of in years, came flooding out of me in the car today on the way home, as I gave Lyle the brief synopsis of the funerals and how my dad then decided what to get me for Christmas. I've probably told him this story before, but he'd either forgotten it, or was gracious and let me tell it again. More likely the latter. As I sat there in the car thinking about it, and missing my parents like I always miss them during this season, he said, "You should get it out again. You know, play it."

"I should," I sighed, "but I'd probably sound terrible." (You know, it’s bad when you sound whiny even to yourself.)

"You said that the last time you played it," he replied, "and I thought it sounded pretty good."

Knowing Lyle's critical ear for music and that he is characteristically not one to exaggerate gave me confidence. When I got home, he took the boys out to play baseball, and I went upstairs, opened the closet door, and found the black case high up on a shelf: forgotten, but not quite. I sat down to open it.

The silver's a little hazy now, and it's got some tarnish spots I need to work on, but here it is twenty-one years later from that Christmas, and it's still a really beautiful instrument. It's still a really beautiful gift.

I assembled it slowly, putting the pieces together and feeling like I'd found an old friend. Not wanting to wake my daughter from her nap, I shut the door to the office and picked out a few Christmas carols. My cheeks grew sore after only a few minutes of playing, but I was surprised how easily my fingers retraced the familiar melodies. My playing was by no means very good, but thankfully, Lyle was right: it was far from terrible.

Beyond the gifts we give each other this year, as bright and colorful as they are resting underneath the Christmas tree, I pray that this season my heart will be tuned more to a quiet gift. One that’s not been wrapped in shiny paper. It’s a sound I can barely hear. In the chaos of activities and presents, it’s nearly forgotten, but not quite. That of a newborn baby's cry, breaking the silence of a cold night in a faraway country more than 2,000 years ago.

He's still a really beautiful Savior. He's still a really beautiful Gift.

Anne Sewall, Christmas 2016