an old story…

{I’m tinkering with an old story. This is how it begins, just a few paragraphs. But there might be something in these few for you…one never knows.}

Meggie absolutely hated Christmas carols and Silent Night was at the top of her list. She felt it mocked her. She had gone completely deaf at age ten; she was now thirteen. Meggie loved the sights of the holidays, but the sounds were a gift that had been returned. Now every night for Meggie was silent. Maybe it would’ve been easier if she’d never heard anything at all, if she’d been deaf from birth. But it wasn’t easier. Meggie’s ears were once filled with her father’s laugh, the honk of geese, the sizzle of bacon, and Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. Now that was gone, all gone. She used to pray with the faith of a child God please give back what you took, but she never heard any reply. These last months had been especially hard on her faith; she felt as if her heart might be dying. She desperately needed the nourishment of memory to live beyond this winter.

Her father had been completely taken with Rachel Ward’s performance in The Thorn Birds, so much so that he prevailed in naming the third of his four daughters. He had written words on parchment paper and framed them for her seventh birthday. They hung above her bed, silently. There’s a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree and never rests until it’s found one. And then it sings more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.

Meggie had endured three surgeries in three years with no audible results. And just last month, in what her father now referred to as the grand mistake, her wealthy aunt arranged an audience with a faith healer in Tulsa. The evangelist had taken Meggie’s ears in his hands as if he might pull them off. He placed his forehead on her nose and with eyes tightly shut began to shake as if suddenly chilled. Meggie smelled fear on his skin, but never heard a word. On the drive home, her mother turned and signed we’ll keep trying. They stopped at a Steak ‘n Shake for cheeseburgers and chocolate milkshakes. When her mother and sisters went to the bathroom, her father signed Meg, I’m sorry. I should have stopped it…