Another Anniversary
Dec. 14th, 2017 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoPublic service announcement to the people who have decided that Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" belongs in the Christmas carol rotation: STOP IT. It's a beautiful and tragic song, but a Christmas carol it is not. Seriously, just DON'T. I first heard it as Christmas music in a Starbuck's in Pittsburgh on a freezing cold Christmas morning. As I recall, it was the Christmas Day when Mr. Science was hosting Christmas, and he got into a big fight with our father. Daddy's Alzheimer's had not yet been recognized, and his increasingly erratic behavior was causing friction. Mr. Science was therefore in a terrible mood, and also threw Queenie out of the house when she turned up there hoping to have breakfast. He ordered us all not to come back until dinner time. So we drove Queenie and her girls around town looking for somewhere to alight on Christmas morning when everything was closed. And on top of that, they played "Hallelujah" while I was just trying to drink my coffee. The Jeff Buckley version, too. I observed darkly to the Sparrowhawk at the time, "They're tryin' to kill me!!" We heard it again at the skating rink tonight. What a buzzkill. I mean, who wants to be tied to a kitchen chair for Christmas? What kind of nonsense is this?
Okay, now that I've got that off my chest . . . . Why the skating rink, you might wonder? The Sparrowhawk got awarded a free night at the fancy hotel downtown, and decided to use it to celebrate the 49th anniversary of our third date, which is today. On this day in 1968, we went out caroling with a group of students, on a frosty cold night when ice was everywhere. We ended up in the lounge of a dorm, where he slyly put Simon and Garfunkel on the stereo (yes!! the stereo! it was so long ago, our song was on vinyl!) and casually sat a tiny bit closer . . . . It was that night he decided I had changed his life forever.
Our hotel room has a lovely view of the frozen city, the dark river, the lit-up streets spread out below us like a Christmas tree. We can see the skating rink from here, surrounded by lighted trees, and the tiny figures swiftly circling it. And one of the things the Sparrowhawk wanted to do while we were here was to go skating. He did really well--he got around the circle three or four times before his legs gave out.
Okay, now that I've got that off my chest . . . . Why the skating rink, you might wonder? The Sparrowhawk got awarded a free night at the fancy hotel downtown, and decided to use it to celebrate the 49th anniversary of our third date, which is today. On this day in 1968, we went out caroling with a group of students, on a frosty cold night when ice was everywhere. We ended up in the lounge of a dorm, where he slyly put Simon and Garfunkel on the stereo (yes!! the stereo! it was so long ago, our song was on vinyl!) and casually sat a tiny bit closer . . . . It was that night he decided I had changed his life forever.
Our hotel room has a lovely view of the frozen city, the dark river, the lit-up streets spread out below us like a Christmas tree. We can see the skating rink from here, surrounded by lighted trees, and the tiny figures swiftly circling it. And one of the things the Sparrowhawk wanted to do while we were here was to go skating. He did really well--he got around the circle three or four times before his legs gave out.
