May 21: A Christmas Pageant for Americans, Prayer of the Week, Daughter

"'A Christmas Pageant for Americans.'  It stinks, but I'm Benedict Arnold.  I have practically the biggest part," she said.  Boy, she was wide-awake.  She gets very excited when she tells you  that stuff.  "It starts out when I'm dying.  This ghost comes in on Christmas Eve and asks me if I'm ashamed and everything.  You know.  For betraying my country and everything.  Are you coming to it?"  She was sitting way the hell up in the bed and all.  "That's what I wrote you about.  Are you?"

Phoebe wants Holden to come to her Christmas program.  (By the way, doesn't the plot of her program sound a little like Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  Funny how things dovetail like that.)  Anyway, she is like any little kid with a solo or dance or recital.  She wants her big brother and sister and mother and father and aunt to be there.

Tonight, my daughter has her final chorus and band concert for the year.  It's called the Collage Concert, because it basically features every student who's involved in music in the middle school.  That may sound like a tedious and horrifying way of spending an hour.  It's not.  The musical selections are done one after another, without any pauses for applause.  One song ends, another begins.  It's the slickest school music program I've every attended.

My daughter has a solo flute part in a band ensemble tonight.  That's a big deal.  She had to audition for it and was chosen from all the other flutists.  She's really excited.  I, on the other hand, am a typical parent.  I will want to vomit until she is done with her solo.  Then I will relax and enjoy the rest of the concert.

My daughter sort of reminds me of Phoebe in the above passage.  My daughter isn't nervous about playing her part.  She knows it cold.  My daughter is interested in who's coming to see her.  Tonight, it will be my wife and me.  I know my daughter gets nervous.  However, her nerves manifest as temper tantrums and screaming.  It's not a pretty sight.  My whole goal this evening is to deliver my daughter to the band room before she melts into a puddle of adolescent sweat and tears.

I do have a prayer for this week, and it has to do with my daughter.

Dear God,

It's me again, you know, the one who calls himself a saint.  Yeah, yeah, I know you're getting tired of hearing from me.  I'm sorry for making a nuisance of myself.

Today, I'm asking you to look out for my daughter.  She's got that band and chorus concert tonight.  She's acting like it's no big deal, but I know she's nervous.  Give her strength and courage.  Let her play her piece the best she's ever played it.  Let her shine.

I'm not saying this as a jealous parent or because I want her to humiliate the other flutists in the band.  I'm saying this because I want my daughter to be confident.  I want her to know that she's beautiful and talented.  I want her to feel that tonight, in every cell of her body.

I know you're watching out for her.  You've been watching out for her ever since she was a baby and my wife was struggling with bipolar.  All those days my wife spent in bed, holding our infant daughter, afraid to let her go.  I know You were with her then.  Be with her again tonight, please.

Remember my little girl.  Your child.

Yours in love,

Saint Marty

P.S.  If You want to humiliate the other flutists a little bit, that would be OK, too.

Please, God, let the other flutists be jealous of my daughter.  Amen.