Kristin

Today won't quite be what it was supposed to be. There will be a lot of that this week for many people in many different places. For some people, this will be the second year in a row that That Virus gets in the way of one of the biggest days of their year.

 

There are two parts to what this day was supposed to be for me: one tradition, and one thing that would have been new.

 

First, the tradition: Pretty much every year on December 23rd, my wife and I join hundreds of other people at the big performing arts center for an annual singalong version of the first part of Handel's Messiah. (Plus the Hallelujah Chorus, because to so many people it isn't Messiah without it, even though it's in the second part of the oratorio.) We've been going long enough that we are aware of the traditions; in my score, I have copies of the two hymns they use every year as vocal warmups. We know that, when you finish the Hallelujah Chorus, you don't lose that page… because after the appropriate applause, we're doing it again as our own encore. And one of those other bits of knowledge influenced the part that would have been new.

 

But before I get to that, let me take you back a few months. It was summer. Vaccines were here and numbers were going in the right direction. We had never heard of the omicron variant; I'm not sure they were even using Greek letters yet for variants of That Virus. In the midst of it, we decided that we needed something just a little bit different. So one weekend, we booked a room at a hotel in the city that adjoins ours and had a bit of a staycation. It was a fun chance to eat at restaurants we like in that area (especially because we rarely go to them, given the parking hassles in that part of the city). We enjoyed the experience thoroughly, and I came up with the idea to add to our Dec. 23rd tradition: we should stay there that night. The hotel was almost an unofficial part of our tradition anyway.

 

Most years, there are no tickets for the singalong Messiah. (This year, given the limits required by That Virus, capacity was limited and preordered tickets are being required.) We all show up early, and press into the lobby, waiting for the moment when the doors of the hall are opened and there is a mad dash to claim our seats.

 

Nominally, we are seated by voice parts: sopranos in one quarter of the room, altos in another; likewise, with tenors and basses. In reality, everybody recognizes that many people want to sit with the people they came with, whether or not they sing the same part. So, it ends up mostly being that at least one person in the group sings the appropriate part. And the others will sing whatever they sing. There are enough of us in the room that you can probably hear somebody else on your part anyway.

 

We have our favorite seating area, after all these years, partly by preference and partly in deference to my wife’s mobility issues and to The Great Exit at the end of the night. (I won’t describe it any more clearly here, because I don’t want anybody stealing “our seats” next year!). We also know that moment, right after the end of the encore, when it’s safe to rush to the exit, before everybody else has gathered their belongings. (It’s not perfect, there are always people ahead of us: but we’ve prepared as much as we can to be out quickly.)

 

Then, it’s across the street to the hotel I mentioned earlier, which is connected to two parking garages: the closest places to park for this event. In past years, we’ve taken the elevator across… and tried our best to get to the car quickly and get out of there. I have heard horror stories from my wife (who has been attending this since before we were a couple) of the traffic and the wait to get out of the garage, so we don’t dawdle when leaving.

 

The night is a fun one, but that dash back to the car always adds a bit of hecticness, at odds with the rest of the night.

 

So this summer, after we stayed at that same hotel, I came up with an idea: what about if we book a room for December 23rd. So that, after the Messiah, we can simply cross the street and take the less busy elevators up to our room instead of having to escape the garage and drive home. My wife thought this was also a great idea, especially after we checked room prices. And we booked the reservation from our hotel room.

 

But alas, I’ve already mentioned That Virus. Even as we booked it, we were aware that a packed hall full of singers might not be the healthiest place to be in the midst of a pandemic. (We definitely made sure of the cancelation terms on our hotel rooms.) And… as things looked dubious, we set a date to have a discussion about whether or not it felt safe. The discussion didn’t happen quite as planned, but in the end, we felt pretty certain this wasn’t the year, and gave up our reservation.

 

It was slightly later that I first saw the plans for this year’s event. Unlike 2020, when The Virus halted the event completely (to be replaced by a streamed video recording of a previous year’s event), they are going ahead tonight. They required tickets and are limiting capacity to 50% (blocking off every other row of seats) and requiring masks. And they will stream live, so those of us who won’t be there can participate at home.

 

It won’t be the same. But… after the past couple of years, I’m OK with not being the same. I do worry. Since we canceled, Omicron has increased in prevalence in this country. I hope and pray that tonight doesn’t become a superspreader event. At least we have vaccines and boosters now that should reduce fatalities now, if That Virus spreads (though That Virus has consequences short of death that we spend far too little time talking about).

 

But as for me and my house, we’ll be on the couch. Probably singing our hearts out. It won’t be the same. But that’s all right. Better different than dead. Better different than sick. Better imperfect than ended.

 

2022 will be another year. And one thing That Virus keeps teaching me is that we can’t predict. Hopefully, it will be safe enough for our Dec. 23rd tradition to resume in more of its usual manner next year. Maybe we’ll remember to reserve a room for after we sing. But whatever happens, we’ll cope. It might not look the same; it might not be the same; but we do the best we can, in hopes of finding safe ways to resume the things That Virus has temporarily stolen from us in the months and years to come.