“You sure can sing,” Jeff Hanson told his six-year-old son, Connor. “You’ll be great in the Christmas concert tomorrow. But let me help you down from the workbench before you fall. It’s time to go in for dinner.”
Jeff lifted Connor down to the shop floor.
“Concert? Tomorrow?” Jeff’s father Dale said.
“You know that, Dad. Tomorrow afternoon.”
Dale groaned. “I thought I was finished with those when you and your sister graduated.”
“Life’s a giant circle Dad,” Jeff said, only semi-sarcastically.
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“Those concerts are the bottom of the wheel.”
“Don’t you like my singing Grandpa?” Connor asked.
“The first seven times you sang ‘Jingle Bell Rock,’ I almost enjoyed it,” Dale said.
“I have lines too!” Connor said. “I get to use the microphone!”
“He’s introducing his class,” Jeff explained.
“You must be a lot braver than your dad,” Dale told the little boy. “Your dad always got so nervous before those concerts.” Then he turned to Jeff. “I hope we can finish with this tractor in the morning, if we’re taking the afternoon off.”
“I think we can,” Jeff said.
As the men left the shop, Connor in tow, a car drove in and parked in front of Jeff’s house. Connor ran to it at top speed, yelling for his grandma.
“Elaine’s mom came all the way from Saskatoon to sit through this concert?” Dale asked.
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “Connor’s excited about it now, but I hope he doesn’t get stage fright at the last minute like I always did.”
“When you were in first grade, we had to pry you off your mother’s leg to get you on stage.”
“I know,” Jeff said.
The next day, Dale and Donna and Elaine’s mother were finishing their soup at Jeff and Elaine’s when Elaine started shooing them all toward the door.
“Let’s start getting out coats on,” she said.
“What time does this shindig start?” Dale asked.
“Not until two,” Elaine admitted, “but by the time we park, and we want to get seats… ”
“Yeah, all right,” Dale said, standing up. “It’s bad enough watching six grades of kids sing when you’re sitting in those hard plastic chairs. Making people stand through that concert could replace waterboarding if the U.S. military found out about it.”
“You’re getting more like your father every day,” Dale’s wife Donna said, narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m not sure I like it.”
Jeff and Elaine, Connor and his little sister Jenny, Elaine’s mom, and Dale and Donna put on their coats and boots and climbed into the SUV. Connor was singing his song before he’d finished buckling his seatbelt.
“This is a treat,” Donna said. “Dale, do you remember how much Jeff hated those concerts?”
“The whole community remembers,” Dale said. “None of the other parents had to drag their kids out from under the bleachers before the performance.”
“Connor’s not worried,” Elaine said.
Connor was still singing. After four run-throughs of “Jingle Bell Rock,” Jeff turned up the radio.
Jeff had to park two blocks from the school. “Look at all these cars. We’ll never get seats,” Dale grumbled, while the family braved the December wind. Inside, they found Helen, Jeff’s grandfather’s partner, waiting in the lobby.
“Ed’s inside,” Helen said. Ed had come early and saved eight seats together in the fifth row of plastic chairs set up on the gym floor. The Hansons made their way through the crowd, stopping to greet friends and neighbours. Jeff took Connor’s hand. “Come on buddy,” he said. “You have to wait with your class.”
Jeff had gone to school in this same building, had even had the same first grade classroom. Coloured tables and chairs had replaced the rows of grey desks Jeff remembered, and there was a smartboard where the old blackboard had hung. But otherwise, it was the same place.
Jeff left Connor in a group of first graders, the boys belting out “Jingle Bell Rock,” the girls comparing dresses. “This place still smells the same,” Jeff thought as he walked back down the hallway, nodding and smiling at other parents.
Back in the gym, Jeff took the empty seat at the end of his family’s row. One of his former classmates was sitting across the aisle.
“Seems weird to be sitting out here with the grown-ups,” Shawn said.
“Yeah,” Jeff answered.
“Hope your kid doesn’t get as nervous on stage as you,” Shawn said. “Remember that year they couldn’t get you out from behind the stage curtains?”
Jeff was quiet; Shawn changed the subject. “Did you ever get that flax off?”
At the other end of the aisle, Dale was leaning ahead to talk. “At least you only have flax out,” Brian Miller was saying. “My in-laws at Kindersley have all their wheat out. My brother-in-law’s stringing Christmas lights on his combine, in case he gets into the field on the 25th.”
Donna pointed to the gym door, where two little boys were peeking in. “There’s Connor!” Both grandmas waved. Connor grinned and waved back until a stressed-looking teacher grabbed both boys and hauled them away.
“Do you think he looks worried?” Jeff asked Elaine.
“He’s fine,” Elaine said.
The crowd was impatient, checking watches, and looking to the stage for the MC. Finally the principal came out from behind the backstage curtains.
“Here we go,” Dale said.
Soon it was time for Connor’s class to take the stage. Jeff watched the line of first graders file in. Connor stepped up to the podium, where the principal was holding the microphone out to him.
Jeff felt the room swirl around him. His vision blurred. His stomach lurched. He leapt out of his seat and ran down the centre aisle and in front of the audience to the gym door. He reached the boys’ bathroom just in time.
After the Grade 6 class finished their modern-day rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and the principal wished the audience a happy holiday, the Hansons and Elaine’s mother made their way to the lobby. They were relieved to find Jeff waiting there, looking pale and a little sweaty.
“Are you okay?” Elaine asked. Jeff nodded weakly.
“How’d he do?” Jeff asked, fearing the worst.
“He’s a showman,” Elaine said.
“Darn right he is,” Dale said. “Before he introduced the class he pointed at you running out the door, and told the audience, ‘That’s my dad.’”
“Oh no,” Jeff said.
“He got a good laugh,” Dale went on. “That egged him on. He managed to tell a couple of jokes about Santa Claus before the principal took back the mike and sent him to sing with the rest of his class.”
“Oh no,” Jeff said.
“It’s okay,” Elaine said. “The jokes were clean.”
“He was adorable,” said Elaine’s mother.
“Best part of the show,” Jeff’s grandfather Ed said.
When the first graders came out to meet their families in the lobby, Connor ran straight to Jeff.
“Daddy! You missed my song!” Connor said.
“I’m sorry, Connor. Maybe you can sing it for me again on the way home.”
“And can I tell you my jokes too?” Connor asked.
“Of course.”
“I can’t wait for next year’s concert, Daddy. Can you?”
