Hand Delivered by Laura J. Oliver

I’ve started decorating for the holidays, dragging out boxes of decorations that I’ve hauled around for decades. Every year I cull a few things I’ve saved but never use. Among them is a crèche set that I bought to celebrate my first married Christmas. Not wanting to spend my first major holiday alone, I’d followed Mr. Oliver’s ship to Barcelona, Spain with Denny, another officer’s wife. The plan was to meet the guys in Madrid, but no young lieutenants greeted us when the plane landed, so we went on to Barcelona alone. There, we discovered that the USS Pharris, FF1094, had never made it to port. 

No one at the base knew the ship’s whereabouts or could estimate a new time of arrival. So, we booked two rooms in the same hotel and spent the next three days getting to know this historic city, primarily walking the route from our hotel down to the dock to inquire about the ship, but day after day, there was still no hint of what had become of it. On Christmas Eve afternoon, restless and a little lost, I headed out into the city alone. 

Barcelona at Christmas was a wonderland of glittering lights, open-air markets selling fresh-cut greens, garlands hung from ancient balconies on winding backstreets, and sparkling trees gracing wide avenues. Garlands even festooned the rear windows of taxis while Felice Navidad played from inside the cabs. Barely 22, barely out of school, barely married, and in a foreign city at Christmas, I walked, longing for some sense of connection. 

I found the creche set on a little crooked side street shop near Cathedral Square. The figures were made of painted pottery, an upgrade from the plastic set of my youth. So I bought baby Jesus in his manger, Mary seated on a hay bale, a standing Joseph, one hefty angel down on one knee, and two cows. No stable. I’d have to figure out housing on my own.  

As I left the shop, I heard faint strains of ethereal music that seemed to come from a flute or panpipe and drum — an ancient carol, a haunting, lyrical melody that drew me down alleys and byways to find its source. I continued to follow the beat of a drum and the song of a flute until turning the corner into Cathedral Square, I was startled to see 12 businessmen, mothers, grandfathers, and passersby, had laid down shopping bags, purses, and briefcases to form a circle in front of the church. Hands joined and raised, moving in silence, they stepped side to side in an ancient circle dance, and now I could see they were accompanied by flute, oboe, trumpet, and drum. It was as if I’d crossed through a portal into the 17th century. They moved soberly, with intent, apparent strangers— as if dancing at a royal court or in a Catalonian wood. 

As the bustle of Christmas shoppers and tourists streamed around them, it was like glimpsing a shooting star or a deer in the woods; something unexpected, existing only for a moment, happened upon only by chance. I watched, mesmerized, as they danced until they broke the circle with quiet smiles, picked up discarded purses and packages without a word, and melted back into the crowd. 

I stopped at an outdoor holiday market, bought a small Christmas tree, and returned to my hotel room deeply moved, as if I’d witnessed a crack in creation or the physical manifestation of a prayer.

But looking at the creche set now, resting chipped in a box marked fragile, I have to admit I have rarely used it. My parents had a creche, so I thought I should have a creche, not yet really knowing who I was. Now, I know I’m not really a creche-set person, but I can’t dispose of Jesus! Not knowing what to do with him is related to why there are 16 accumulated Bibles in the basement. I put him back in the box. 

As the day wore on that Christmas Eve, and the ship had still not appeared, I decided to make one last effort to find it. Together, Denny and I called the US Consulate in Madrid. Identifying ourselves as Navy wives attached to the Pharris, we were finally informed that the ship had been delayed by an unexpected engagement with a Russian sub. Communication had been impossible, but the ship was now enroute and would dock that evening next to DD 837, the USS Sarsfield. 

Relieved and excited, Denny and I made our way down to the harbor and were soon invited aboard the Sarsfield to await the ship’s arrival. Grateful after standing around on the cold concrete piers in leather boots and long winter coats, we chatted in the wardroom until we were called to the Bridge to see the USS Pharris pulling up alongside at last. 

With the Captain of the Sarsfield, we watched the Pharris attempt to dock, but designed with only one propeller, the ship was having difficulty backing into her berth. The maneuver was tricky or the Officer of the Deck young—but as the minutes dragged on with no way to connect the ships to each other or the Pharris to the pier, it became increasingly frustrating. The ships were only separated by a few feet, but it might as well have been the entire Mediterranean Sea. Suddenly, the Captain turned to us and said, “This is ridiculous. We’ll hand you across.”

And so, with complete trust that we would not be dropped into the water between the ships and with our husbands at their stations unaware—we were literally handed from sailors on the Sarsfield over the water into the hands of sailors on the Pharris. 

So, my first Christmas as an adult, out in the world on my own, my first married Christmas, was not spent alone. It was spent in Barcelona, Spain, where strangers danced and kindness reigned. 

So much has changed in my life since that night. Where is the Captain of the Sarsfield now, I wonder? Where are the enlisted guys who stopped what they were doing to hand us safely over Mediterranean waves? Where are all the acts of kindness we perform?

Every act of compassion surely leaves an imprint on the universe, an energy signature that may dissipate but cannot disappear. Maybe someday we’ll discover kindness is the mysterious force that entangles us—that forever connects you and me—which is why we have never really been separate, why we have never really danced alone.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.