Happy New Year!

When I strolled into the choir room yesterday — and I did stroll. I am not much of a stroller normally, more of a strider. My sons always complain about how fast I walk. But I was wearing heels yesterday. The girls in my senior high Sunday School class told me they loved my shoes, but I find that I have to walk more like a giraffe or something than at my usual pace.

So when I strolled in, I found that the entire collection of people in the room was me, one bass, the director, and The Baritone. The director, himself a tenor, headed out to try to scare up some sopranos someplace.

We had been planning a stirring gospel rendition of “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” with a soprano solo. The soloist, said the bass, was in Arizona.

“Shall we rearrange this?” I asked, “Or should we just do something different?”

We decided to do something different. A second soprano arrived — The Chemist — and began pawing through the drawers of music. By the time she started passing out copies of “Still, Still, Still,” we had at least one representative of each part. That soprano has probably never been greeted with as much fervor as she got that day.

The soloist for “Go Tell it On the Mountain” bustled in clutching her music at five minutes of eleven — eleven being the starting time for the service.

We had a replacement organist, an old friend of mine.

An old friend only in the sense that I have known him for years and sung with him in a choir or two. He is actually quite young — young enough, indeed, that The Baritone said “You should introduce him to your daughter.” Of course, they know one another. We live in a small town, and the classical music scene is not that heavily populated. We all know one another. My fellow choir members find it odd that I know all the visiting musicians.

“Were your kids in school with him?” the Chemist asked. This is the kind of explanation that usually occurs to them. Sometimes it’s “Did your kids go to school together?”

“No,” I always have to say, “I just know him from music.”

The organist and I had a good discussion of various directors’ and singers’ plans for the spring. He was off to Italy on a choir tour, himself.

“What do you think of The Canadian Director?” the organist asked me.
“I worked with him in the Master Chorale. He’s great.”
“I hear that he does all this contemporary music,” he said austerely. “I hear that Fine Soprano is thinking of leaving his choir.”
“Hmm,” I said. “I just saw her last week. She didn’t say anything about it.”

Of course, Fine Soprano and I had been talking about our kids the whole time on that occasion.

“I’ll ask La Bella,” I said. We moved on to other members of our set. The organist was thinking of rejoining the Chamber Singers in the spring, but he had heard that the repertoire was to be all German.

“Bach is nice,” I suggested.
“Yes, but I don’t want to get stuck on German.”

The young can be very strict.

I did, following the recommendation of The Baritone, call up #2 daughter and tell her that the organist had filled out a bit and was looking very cute. He is a year or so younger than she is, but I appreciate the fact that the church members are looking out for her. Between this church and the church where she works, we can probably find her a Nice Young Man and save her from meeting guys on the way to the ladies’ room in bars.

In the afternoon, we brought out the cookies #2 daughter made and a pot of tea, and I had an almost entirely lazy afternoon. I tidied a bit, but mostly it was reading and knitting and enjoying the rainy afternoon. My husband watched football. My sons played a game with some surprising characteristics.

“How many geologists have you got?” one said to the other at one point.

Video games rarely include geologists. Berserkers, sure, paladins, 6th level mages. But geologists?

Today I plan to finish up the HGP with the New Year’s Day custom known as “the clearing.” You go through your house with pencil and paper and list all the things you want to fix during the year. This includes mending the wallpaper and replacing the blinds, but it is also a chance to notice if work has spread throughout the house and taken over your private life, or if you have dozens of UFOs and no FOs. You look at your house as though it were the setting for a play and see what the set designer would be telling you about the person who lived there. This allows you to finish up your resolutions or goals.

Apart from that, I hope to do some sewing, and otherwise plan on complete laziness.