A Christmas Memory

            “Bobby Jo, there’s a group of us going caroling after lunch, would you be interested?”

            “Sure, who all is going?” I ask, curious.

            “Oh, anyone who wants to go. I think we have about fifteen or so. Vivien is taking us around. We’ll meet out back by the kitchen door.”

            The group trudges down a lane I’ve not noticed before, dressed in wool scarves, long skirts, pants, hats and mittens, crunching on gravel. My breath hangs in the sharp air, wet with the promise of snow. Wood smoke and ginger scents curl up from stone chimneys. It feels like Christmas.

            “What are we singing?” I ask as we walk, watching Vivien Elliott chatting at the front of the assemblage. Without her flowing silk piano-playing costume she looks more like a down-to-earth, middle-aged English woman in the usual wool skirt, knee-high wool socks and sweater, brown hair brushing her shoulders under a knit wool hat.

            “Vivien has some hand-outs. She’ll pass them around when we get there, I guess,” Jill of the short blond hair volunteers.

            The lane is narrow with overhanging trees. I hadn’t realized there was more to Sherborne Village than the short open stretch with the Post Office and Social Club. I’m not even sure where we are, but that doesn’t matter. I’m along for the ride, enjoying my part in a tradition that feels quintessentially British. I like to sing, and everyone knows Christmas carols.

            “I hope they sing the same ones we do in America.”

            “Right.”

            I fall silent, becoming aware of myself walking in a foreign country, quaint and out of time. I’m aware of the cold and relax the muscles that have tightened in response. Suddenly a heat in my right leg draws my attention. With a shock I recognize sensation. Sensation happening of its own accord. Sensation filling every blood cell of my leg with an energy beyond my experience. My thought goes to my left leg and sensation obediently blooms, rich and pulsing, inside the leg yet also outside it. Wow. Now I understand what it means “to sense.” I thought I knew, I thought I was doing it. But this is like it’s doing itself or doing me. Far out!  I hold onto what is happening in my legs for as long as I can.

            This unbidden moment of the strongest sensation I had ever experienced may have been the result of months of practicing sensation, learning to bring it on at my bidding, learning to direct it around my limbs—a harbinger of a shift in my “station,” a new plateau from which to continue my efforts.

            Vivien stops in front of a house and opens the gate. “Come on, duckies, come through, come through.” Her smile pulls us together. We troop in and cluster around the heavy wood door. She passes out mimeographed sheets of lyrics and Richard leads us as we sing, “Good King Wenceslas,” “Deck the Halls” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Our voices are warming up, if not our hands. The door opens a crack and then widens, a sturdy, aproned woman standing there with young children on either side. Her stout husband towers behind, head and shoulders obscuring the rest of the lintel.

            Warmed by having an audience, we launch into “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Soon the family is joining in the chorus, “O-oh, tidings of comfort and joy.”

            The little towheaded boy on the right tugs at his mother’s sleeve. She bends down and he whispers loudly to her, “Can they thing Willie?”

            Looking up she asks, “Do you Know ‘Pat-a-Pan?’”

            Vivien rifles through her papers and looks at Richard.  He nods his dark shock of hair and asks the group, “How many of us know the lyrics to ‘Willie Bring Your Drum?’”

            I had never heard this old English carol, but a number of hands go up among the Brits.

            Richard says, “Let’s give it a go for this little guy.” He smiles at the child, catches the eyes of the affirmative head shakers, and begins,

                                                            Willie take your little drum;

                                                            Robin, bring your fife and come;

                                                            And be merry while you play,

                                                            Tu-re-lu-re-lu,

                                                            Pat-a-pan-a-pan,

                                                            Come be merry while you play,

                                                            Let us make our Christmas gay!

                                                            Tu-re-lu-re-lu

            The children make up the words they don’t know and belt out Tu-re-lu-re-lu and Pat-a-pan-a-pan. I take my cue from them. We’re all smiling by the last line, “Sing and dance this Christmas day!”

            Our reward is a warm welcome into the little cottage, filling the sitting room as fresh cookies (what the Britts call biscuits) and hot chocolate are passed around. And so, we proceed from house to house, caroling down the village lane.