My First Christmas
This week, as we gear up for American Christmas (as we Copts like to call Dec. 25), I am thinking about my six-year-old self and her first Christmas.We find Little Laura in her first grade classroom. Like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, I am standing in the room peering out at me, several years removed, sitting at the craft table, cutting and pasting a chain out of red and green construction paper.Ms. Shelor, our brilliant and loving teacher, is playing a cassette tape of music for us, as she always does, to give a cheerful background to all our activities. In this classroom, we know we are safe and loved just as we are.It's Christmas music, though I'm too young to recognize any such thing. I'm practically dancing in my seat as I cut, grinning.Suddenly, I realize I know the song. Can I reference that moment in Ratatouille when Anton Ego with a single bite is taken back to his mother's kitchen? It was just like that.You have to understand, just three months earlier, we left everything we knew to start a new life in a new language on an entirely different continent. I'm not supposed to know the song. But there I am whisper-singing in Arabic. It's "Away in a Manger" and, for the first time (but not the last), I know that I am very far from home in a busy school under a strange flag, doused in achy loneliness.Ms. Shelor starts to walk by the table. I straighten up. I stealthily wipe the tears and make like I'm ok. She moves on. How could I possibly explain in my as-yet broken English?Oh for a way to hug that little girl and tell her it's just fine to be sad and happy and confused. To tell her there's power in learning the same song twice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv38O9G8mqshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14XkBlPWzB8
Your Turn
Do you have any special memories around Christmas? If you're an immigrant, what was your first Christmas in your new land like? Leave a comment below or drop me a line.
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