Losing my religion, part 2

The doorbell rang early in the evening and my mom went to answer it. It was shortly before Christmas. I was 17. We were making cookies and within minutes I planned to drive to a friend's house and pick her up for an evening of knocking about in search of random fun. Like teenagers do.

But my mom returned to the kitchen and said to me with dismay, "It's for you."

Outside the front door stood Christmas carolers from our church youth group waiting to sing for me. Not for my family (all members of the church), nor for my sister and me, but specifically for me.

I'd chosen not to carol with them that year (likewise my sister), but I'd gone the year before and recalled how we'd begun with a list of elderly church members, most who didn't leave home anymore during icy winter days. I remembered we'd been asked if there were others we wished to carol, with invalids getting special preference. The theory, I suppose, is that "shut-ins" need extra holiday cheer.

Unaccountably, I'd now made the list.

They sang three songs -- the last was my favorite Christmas hymn. My youth group peers had known it was my favorite from the thoughtful personal discussions we'd shared in confirmation class, and I guess they thought that would be a special treat for me. But we'd talked as equals in class and here I was cast as the subject of their benevolent generosity.

As I watched them sing I wished their visit was somehow a silly joke, a tease to a good friend who failed to join them in their caroling fun. But none of these people were my close friends and their visit was utterly sincere. When they'd made the list of who to go sing songs for, my name had obviously been raised as a person in serious need of holiday cheer -- as an invalid, I guess -- despite my presence with them every weekday in school and long hours most days at after-school activities.

At the end of the third song, the carolers presented me with a little plate of Christmas cookies which were really quite similar to the cookies we'd been baking when the doorbell rang. My mother and sister -- in an act of family solidarity -- returned the gesture by giving them a plate of ours. I smiled grimly wishing I was already driving across town in my mother's sportscar. Would they have sung to the rest of my family if they'd arrived fifteen minutes later? Would cookies have exchanged hands? I honestly don't know.

I'm thinking this out as I go. Part 3 to come.