Christmas Carols

Do you hear what I hear?

• Humming and singing and whistling while they're in the shower or walking through the house.
• The buzz of voices, a jazz composition that allows fantastic flights of improvisation, sounds rising and dipping and merging and floating to the top, but with a meter and beat that is familiar like old socks.
• Laughter. More than any ear deserves. Laughter as simple audible grace.
• Dice rolling on the hardwood table. Scrabble tiles being stirred in the bag. Shuffling cards. The ear-splitting shaking of Boggle cubes.
• The distinct, utterly unique scraping of hands through buckets of Lego bricks, searching for the right one, one in a million.
• Silent breathing in a dark room with the Christmas tree lights on.
• Feet tumbling down the stairs, identifying by the cadence, landing, and creak of wood the individual who walks with them.

The kids are home. All is well. Merry Christmas.