A Tuba Christmas

One of the most memorable Christmas presents I ever got was from my friend Winston. I think about it every year.

He doesn't live around here any more; he's been gone for years, chased by his demons halfway across the globe.

Winston and I worked together at the same newspaper, and we quickly became friends. In those early days, he was a soft-spoken gentle man. He loved the woods and he played the tuba in an orchestra.

The tuba is one of those instruments the casual listener doesn’t really notice in an orchestra unless it's missing. If you listen to a piece of music, the tuba lies just beyond recognition, but it’s there, way down deep. And way down deep, in the bass cleft of a wonderfully complex personality, something was resonating inside Winston. And it disturbed him.

It started to surface at work, in small ways at first. He’d blurt out something or slam a book down. Just frustration, the stress of the job, I figured. No big deal. But the outbursts intensified and at times became confrontational.

I became concerned, and I was not alone. What’s wrong with Winston, we wondered, concluding that he just needed a woman. So we were all delighted when he found one. He met a really sweet girl, and they seemed a nice fit. They enjoyed the outdoors and animals and so many things together. When he found out she smoked an occasional cigar, it cinched the deal. They were married.

We were happy for them, and we were happy for us, too, because for a while Winston settled down to his old self. Unfortunately, it didn't last. His temper  flared anew. And there was no predicting it. At work anything, a computer glitch or a misplaced comma could trigger it. It got to the point where no one wanted to work with the guy.

And then one day, it came to a head. It was away from the work place.

He came home to find John Denver music coming out of the speakers. He flew into a rage, he went berserk, he threw things, glass was broken, and then… Suddenly the light came on. I think he looked at the shards of windowpane on the floor and he saw, finally, that he had a problem.  You know it's serious when John Denver pushes you over the edge. 

He told me he was going to get help; he'd decided to face his demons. But it never happened. He quit his job and his marriage dissolved. He made a few other bad decisions and then he fled to Asia.

I sent him a Christmas card last week and told him I was going to write this. I told him I was doing so with affection and in appreciation for the gift he'd given me so long ago. It was a gift he offered during his darkest hours, just before he left. It came on Christmas night.

The holiday crew was thin, just me and one other worker on the copy desk, one guy in Sports, and maybe a pressman or two, in early. The building was otherwise deserted. It always is on Christmas.

We saw him come in the back door and shake the snow and cold from his coat. He didn't say a word. He just sat down on the other side of the room and opened the case he had carried in.

We'd become used to Winston's odd and unpredictable behavior by now, and we might have had another reaction had the case been shaped like a violin. But we just watched him with silent curiosity as he pulled the tuba to his lips. And he began to play.

It was "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."  And he played "Silent Night" and "What Child Is This" and he played for half an hour or more, and through that solo tuba he bared his gentle soul to us that night. And he never said a word.

When he was finished, he placed the tuba back into its case, donned his coat and left us in a place more beautiful than the one we'd entered.

I'm not always able to see the troubles that smolder under the surface, inside my friends and co-workers, my neighbors and my lover. And sometimes I don't recognize all the hidden beauty either.

But sometimes I'm lucky enough to tune my ears to hear it, that warm resonant note that flows forth from the depths of a soul. And I'm always awed by it.

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