It’s those see stars. One arm breaks off, they just grow another one, appearing time after time. Whaddyagonnado.
(Michelle volunteers one-on-one as a tutor and the middle schooler brought her holiday cookies as a thank you. Michelle wasn’t about to tell her she didn’t dare risk eating them; it was a sweet thing for her to have done. I was glad to help out a little, and besides, I could use nudging the scale up a tad.)
Meantime, this morning, our piano doctor who makes house calls, an old friend after all these years, came by. The house was, shall we say, unfinished–and I was discouraged at how fast my energy had given out on me.
He smiled a warm smile; “Doesn’t look messy to me.”
And at that suddenly everything was much better.
He glanced out at the birds on the feeder, taking them in for a moment; he has done recordings of the wildlife in his own area. I’ve heard his frogs. (If you ever need some theme music while ripping out your knitting…) I wondered if he could hear my finches through the window.
I’ve heard them I think twice now. Yesterday the feeder swung around so one couldn’t see me coming as I opened the slider as quietly as I could and slipped outside. The feeder swung back around, and I was close enough to stroke the little bird’s stripey-brown feathers had I moved. I didn’t dare move. Or breathe. It chirped and dove into the seed, again and again, keeping an eye on me–and when I did finally breathe, it was a Mr. Tumnus moment: Oh my goodness! You’re a human, and I’m–I’m a bird! Fright and flight!
I picked up my needles while Neil tuned my piano.
I don’t usually knit in the mornings; I’m not sure how to describe the weirdness that is the body responding in slow motion before about noon–you tell it to move and it dithers like a 13-year-old told to do the dishes and arguing about it. Knitting at that hour, and particularly on tiny needles? Slow as doing taxes.
And yet. He played a few snatches of song here and there as he tuned, reminding me why my concert-pianist grandmother had chosen that Kimball in the first place ages ago. Such a gorgeous depth of sound to it.  Some notes had slipped, but he was pulling them back into where they belonged.
The needles picked up a bit.
He got to the highest notes on the piano. So many times in the last twenty years I’ve heard only the slight thud thud of the hammers hitting against the strings up there, but with my ears turned up now–thank you John Miles–I caught a few of those actual notes, thin and high and as unstable as a hummingbird’s flight, but briefly actually mystically somehow there. So that’s what those sound like. I had long forgotten. Wow.
That stopped my hands altogether across the room as I felt, Do it again! Make it play like that again! And he did. I didn’t hear each note every time, but just enough to feel like I was in the presence of a small, rare gift from Life itself.
Don’t forget to breathe! And don’t stop in the middle of a row of laceweight silk or you’ll drop a thousand stitches and he was almost done there. Hurry!
I didn’t finish the row. I didn’t drop the stitches. I did, however, find myself hugely cheered on a morning when I had been needing cheering.
So many grace notes appear when we are in the presence of good people who are our friends.
The kids are coming home soon. Let the music begin.