By Kristen M. Scott
It was the first Christmas Eve since my father’s death and my divorce, and I was determined to forge a picturesque holiday for my family despite the losses of the past year. Escorting my children, then ages eight and six, to church with my mother, who was showing the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, I recognized that the stress of the season had reached its crescendo. Bedecked in our holiday finery, however, we found seats near the rear of the nave just prior to the start of the popular service of lessons and carols.
My son, whose autism makes it difficult for him to sit still and quiet for extended periods, showed early promise but moved on to the dreaded whine, precursor to more serious objections, after just a few minutes. Instructing my daughter to stay with Grandma, I grasped my son’s hand and led him from the pew, my daughter’s stricken face silently imploring me to stay with her for the candle lighting she wanted so much to share with me.
Cursing my folly at attempting this church feat by myself, we entered the fellowship hall beyond the nave where my son ran, free, to the windows at the far side of the room. Two other boys, perhaps five and seven years old, whose ill-behavior, I assumed, had also elicited their ejections from the service, were carousing at the far end of the room as well, while a woman, unfamiliar to me, sat rigidly on a bench near the nave, her arms crossed, her face stony.
Across the room the two boys were attempting to engage my son, making remarks I couldn’t hear but apparently asking him something.
As I approached to tell them my boy did not talk, the younger one pushed him in the chest, frustrated I suppose, at this child who did not respond. Rage, born of my worst fears for my child—that he would be bullied, tormented, unable to protect himself from a world he did not join or care to understand—welled inside me as I hurried to rescue him from these monstrous brats.
Son in hand, I strode purposefully to the woman on the bench, who either did not see or chose to ignore this behavior.
“Are those your children?” I asked, my voice shaking with self-justified anger.
She nodded in bored affirmation.
“Well, one of them just pushed my son.”
She merely shrugged, so I continued, playing my trump card: “He’s autistic and can’t defend himself.” That ought to get her attention.
She regarded me with contempt.
“My son has leukemia,” she shot back. “You want to compare disabilities?”
Stung, speechless with shame, I retreated to the youth room, still clinging to my self-righteous hurt as the injured party. The irony is that my son was unaffected by the exchange, insulated by his disorder from the slights and hurts I feel so acutely on his behalf. I stood shaking in the youth room, surrounded by posters proclaiming God’s love, seething with anger and the encumbering weight of self-pity, knowing I would have no peace without making it right with this woman I had tried to shame, whom I had used to vent the rage and defiance of all I had found so unacceptable during the last 12 months.
I found her sitting in the nursery and she looked up defiantly as I opened the door, ready for another confrontation.
“I owe you amends,” I said.
She stared at me, expressionless, and I continued, unaware of what I intended to say. “I’m just so angry.”
After a moment her whole body seemed to sag and she said quietly, “I’m so angry, too.”
She had just wanted to enjoy church on Christmas Eve, she explained, and her boys would not cooperate. We shared fears, then, about our children and ourselves, the sense of powerlessness in the face of horrors beyond our control, our disillusionment with the unbidden, unwelcome paths our lives had taken. In the space of ten minutes, two angry strangers made a connection, finding comfort in each other, learning we were not alone in despair while the rest of the world sang “Jingle Bells.”
I’m grateful I was given enough humility that night to apologize, and thankful that she could accept it.
A Christmas epiphany, life-changing, allowing me to accept, once and for all, life on life’s terms? Unfortunately, not entirely. Life is challenging, painful; I struggle often and opening. But I think of that Christmas Eve often, too. The woman I met that night lost her son two years later, and I remember that, when my days seem very low. I still have my son, and my daughter. I still have them with me.
Beautiful, Kristin, inspiring. Makes me realize we all need to think twice before criticizing moms with out-of-control children in stores during this busy holiday season. We have no idea what the lives are like of either the child or his parents. Thank you for reminding me of that.
Thank you for reading, Marian, and your comment is so true. I’ve never forgotten that night, what I learned about my own self-pity, and the world beyond my own very limited view at that time. We all carry burdens, some almost crushing, that the public can’t see. You are right that we have to remember that so much can be happening below the surface… On another note, I sure miss you, especially at this time of year. xo
I just discovered your Kimball story and it captivated me, because it was a story involving my good friend, a friend unlike any of my other friends, and a friend I am reminded of constantly, all good and all welcomed. His painting, possibly his last, is a small canvas depiction of me resembling a lizard, a head shot only but with lizard skin. Kimball, practically from our initial introduction to each other sometime in 1981 or 82, told me I reminded him of a lizard followed by his impression of a lizard tracking a fly in flight, a faint buzzing coming from his lips, mimicking the sound of well…..a “fly in flight”, but he didn’t make it apparent it was he who was buzzing, labeling himself the first insect ventriloquist, his eyes moving left and right, up and down until he darted his tongue at this imaginary bug and returned said tongue even more quickly than it’s exit, and with the morsel captured on the tip, followed by a “thsipp”
sound effect. All of this would, more often than not, would be be his typical greeting to me. Occasionally he would do it a second time during the night at work. I miss that silliness, and Kimball too.
So as I was saying, after reading this story, some of which Kimball had shared,
I was a bit sad then found more reasons to smile, because, although it allegedly isn’t possible, I believe there was much more yang than yin in your story and in my memories of him, three plus decades of memories. I’ll tell you, no matter how many times friends, loved ones or anybody you may admire, despise, or have any emotions for, no matter what, after their passing, I always think that I took them for granted. I know we all have an expiration date, but it isn’t something I dwell upon, which, I believe, can make one not have any feelings except the present stimulation you get, either love, hate ,respect, any emotion you had about one that has passed. My father, mother, friends, now Kimball, all are gone and I cant help but feel I took them for granted while they lived, but now, no matter how many times you robotically said the words, it is too late to tell them you truly loved them,
and how they have affected your life.
I really like and appreciate your style of writing Kristin and after having stated the above feelings , I feel the need to say again, Thank You and I love you.
Stephen Nasser