Heather Lende
The winter concert
|
It's sort of corny, and very sweet, and when it's sung by your friends and neighbors, who in many ways are a lot like their King Island counterparts, in a place where it's possible similar adversity would be met with the same courage and unity, it makes you cry.
In a song called "Trouble" the cast turned a negative into a positive in grand Broadway tradition. The every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining message wasn't lost on an audience wondering what will happen to Haines now that the big cruise ships we've been fighting over for a couple of years shocked everyone by announcing they wouldn't be back this summer.
The next afternoon eight of us were getting into the Chinese Snow Dragon costume for the annual Christmas parade. Mark is the head, I'm right behind him with a fire extinguisher filled with flour. When Mark tips his head up and the sound track roars, I squeeze the trigger and the dragon belches "smoke." Mark is a mechanic for Haines biggest tour guides. I asked him what he thought about the cruise ships pulling out. "What's that they say about doors closing and windows opening? It'll be a little tough, but we'll be all right."
Mark lead the way out of the Elks Lodge and onto Main Street - the Snow Dragon takes some time to get all 27 serpentine feet out the door. Besides the dragon, the parade includes four fire trucks, three horses, a flat bed full of carolers from the Salvation Army and lots of sparklers and fire crackers. It's so short we do it twice, turning around at the bank and dancing the dragon back the way it came.
The Winter Concert, on the other hand, other lasts much longer. About the limit a person can sit on wooden bleachers in a gym. Just about every school child from kindergartners to twelfth graders are in it. All 400 of them. There are risers at one end for the choirs and folding chairs at the other for the bands. Christmas lights hang between volley ball poles behind both areas. It looks a little like a two-ring circus.
Mr. Krebs, the music teacher, led the smallest children to their places, blinking good-naturedly at the flashbulbs from parental paparazzi.
When the kindergartners belted out "Have A Very Merry Christmas," everyone smiled. You couldn't help it.
The concert rolled on with the predictable fare, Ding Dong Merrily On High , Pat-A-Pan , Jingle Bells, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, The Dreydl Song until the third and fourth graders woke everyone up with Yellow Submarine. They even had a bubble machine and kazoos. "Now that was worth the price of admission," my husband whispered.
Then little Ellis Anne Green, stepped forward to sing the first and only solo of the night, a song I've never heard of called "When the River Meets The Sea."
Ellis sang about mountains and valleys and questions and answers. Then all the children sang about truth and dreams, and concluded that in time we'll understand everything - "...when the river meets the sea."
Two great rivers meet the saltwater on either side of Haines. The mountains, rivers and sea define the landscape, and the landscape defines us. And now our children were singing about it.
I almost got misty-eyed.
Luckily the beginning band played next, a rocky rendition of Santa Claus is Coming to Town . While it was mesmerizing to parents with children in the band, the other v500 or so people tried to keep babies quiet and looked around at familiar faces.
Across the gym my neighbors, Steve and Linnus and daughter Robyn, listened patiently to each tune. Robyn just got back from two and half years in the Peace Corps in Africa. She and her mom and sister all wear silver bracelets, carved with the view from their home. Inside each bracelet is carved the words, "Where The River Meets The Sea." The song said rivers meeting the sea help us find a purpose and understand our dreams. It seems to have worked for Robyn.
I was thinking about that when Mr. Krebs gathered the high school jazz band together for a final selection worthy of the Snow Dragon in Haines holiday lore- Trashin' The Camp from the movie Tarzan. He played a trombone with blue plastic tubing attached to it that made a noise like an elephant. Teenagers drummed on pots and pans. It was terrific.
Haines' wacky holiday celebration is a bit off beat, but once a year it does brings this often contentious town closer together. So if you're having trouble getting in the holiday spirit, try humming a few bars of Yellow Submarine, better yet, get yourself a kazoo and play it. I guarantee you'll smile.