Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1961-12-01 / 12. szám
FRATERNITY 3 Then the day of the Christmas entertainment: boys clumping up the aisle, the girls switching their short skirts proudly. David’s mother clutched her handbag nervously. The crash from the piano giving them the tone, all the mouths open, “It came upo-on the midnight clear That glorious so-ong of old . . .” The mother’s tense hands relaxed. Teacher’s long drill and hers had been successful. It was not howling; it was singing. There were swelling crescendos and at the lines: “The world in so-olemn stillness lay To hear the a-angels sing . . .” the child voices were hushed in a diminuendo. Part of the mother’s very life, she thought wryly, had been spent in securing her part of the diminuendo. So there he stood, her little David, a fully accredited part of his corner of society, as good as anybody, the threat of inferiority feeling averted this time. The door had been slammed in his face. She had pushed it open, and he had gone through. The hymn ended. The burst of parental applause began clamorously. The third grade filed down from the plaform. Surely, now, the mother thought, David would turn his head to where she sat and thank her with a look. Just this once. He did turn his head as he filed by. He looked full at his family, at his father, his mother, his kid sister, his big brother and his sister from the high school. He gave them a formal, small nod to acknowledge publicly that they were his family. But his mother knew that his look was not for her alone. It was just as much for those of his family who had been bored, impatient spectators of her struggle to help him, as for her who had given part of her life to roll that stone uphill. She sighed. Mothers were to accept what they received, without bitterness, without resentment. After all, that was what mothers worked for — not for thanks, but to do their job. The sharp chisel of life, driven home by experience, flaked off expertly another flint-hard chip from her blithe, selfish girlhood. It fell away from the woman she was growing to be, and dropped soundlessly into the abyss of time . . But a few nights later, close to Christmas, the mother looked out her kitchen window to see if David was returning from a neighbor’s. The night was cloudless, cold and still. Her backyard was almost transparent in the pale radiance that fell from the stars. Then she saw David. Knee-deep in the snow he stood, looking all around him. Then he lifted his face towards the sky. What could he be looking at? Or hearing? She opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the dark, under the stars. He came quickly to her, and put his arms around her. With every fiber of her body which had borne his, she felt a difference in him. “It’s so still”, he said quietly in a hushed voice, a voice she had never heard before.
