The Feel-good Programme

        Once there was a midnight Christmas Mass in South Florida. Each fat white candle wore a halo of golden gauze. Each wick curled with scented smoke. In the crush of people the serge and the woolen of winter gave off a hint of mothballs. Even with its doors wide open, the church held its breath and warmth like a beast of wordly burden. A cold Norther pressed upon the tropical night. Coconut fronds rattled above crocus hedges. Stunted banana and frangipani shivered in stoic silence. Silent Night.
        It was 1954. Joe was ten years old, and he was having a tough time with his Communion Fast. At home were platters of date cookies, toll house cookies, gingerbread and shortbread, and wafer-thin sugar cookies sprinkled with candy glitter. So, standing in the third-row pew with Mom and Dad and singing "Adeste Fideles," he hungered and craved and even salivated for just one sweet morsel.
        "Sorry," he whispered to Crispen, his guardian angel, and posted the tiny pang of guilt in a prayer-envelope to God.


        MEMORY EDIT: Delete "tiny pang of guilt."
        "What should I add, sir?"
        "Let's see," the supervisor said. "Remember, we want this to be a totally positive feel-good programme. Skip the whole guardian angel thing. Pick up with Joe thinking about his parents. He feels safe and secure. It's a wonderful moment."


        The Sans Souci hotel had passed from being an Art Deco hotspot during the Yuppie '80s  and was now a retirement home for brain diseased Boomers, whose azure dreams drifted like cumulus clouds over a distant sapphire Gulf Stream.
        Joe lived there, memory-impaired.
        On the Night Before Christmas his granddaughter brought a gift. It was a new memory chip for his Thinking Cap.



                                                                                     *


         She found him out on the pier, baiting a hook. Evidently the Thinking Cap had provided him with a long-forgotten expertise. His face shined.
         "The moon is beautiful out there. On the water," Joe declared. A lucid statement that amazed her.
         The Thinking Cap was a marvel, glistening on his head.
         She did not understand how it played God with neurons, synapses, and nano linkages. Nor did she care. It was, quite simply, Magic.
         "Merry Christmas, Grandfather."
        


         Up in his little room, precisely at midnight, Joe was ten again and singing hymns with Mom and Dad. The church was alive and quick with angels!