A World Turned Upside Down: A Thrill of Hope

O Holy Night has never been my favorite Christmas song. 

Oh, it's beautiful if it's done absolutely perfectly. The hushed opening crescendo-ing up and up until it bursts into splendor--magnificent! But the chances it will be done perfectly are slim. Most singers can reach the opening notes, a few good sopranos can reach the mid-part of the song when we FALL on our KNEES to HEAR the angel VOICES. Rare, though, is the belter who can confidently reach the E-natural of the NIIIIIIGHT, and even fewer can reach the G-natural of the NIIIIIIIIIIIIGT DIVINE, before shushing back down to the night when He was born. 

I've accompanied this song maybe a thousand times in my life, and every single time I've sympathetically dreaded that G natural. 

This year, though, I have this song on mental repeat. I sing it to myself on my morning walk, delusionally confident no one is seeing me in my ratty work-out clothes. I hum it as I wash the pans in which I've baked peppernuts and combined cereals for party mix. I mouth the words in the shower, and as I wrap presents. 

They are my end-of-year anthem for 2020, because dear ones, we are going to make it. Even as the noose of numbers tighten around us, and friends and loved ones test positive, I feel it: 

A thrill of hope. 

Did you sob as you saw the first health worker being vaccinated? I did. And I sobbed again when my Lovely Girl #2, a frontline doctor with high-risk health issues, posted the picture of her own arm being jabbed. Every vaccination picture of those health workers, who must be so tired and so sad, made me cry.

A thrill of hope.

When the first of my immediate family let us know he had tested positive in spite of scrupulous precautions, but then emerged with only manageable symptoms, I began to unclench my jaw 

A thrill of hope.

When the political signs all but disappeared in Small Town and I began to think we may survive with our democracy threatened but not destroyed. 

A thrill of hope. 

It doesn't mean we are somehow back to the Before, of course. We have so very much work still to do, to keep ourselves and others safe and to move forward to a more communicative, more-inclusive us on the heels of so much division. 

We will never forget the ones who did not make it through the pandemic, and the scars on our businesses, our schools, our psyches, and our confidence will never disappear although they will inevitably fade. 

But it's there, that thrill of hope, and we can hit the high G with confidence.

A weary world rejoices.