Thursdays

Thursday is my favorite day; I teach a morning class, a 3-hour afternoon seminar, most times my office hours are packed, I usually have a meeting just when I might get to eat lunch, and I end the day around 9:00, when Don and I get home from motet choir rehearsal. Then I watch Modern Family with Peter while I eat dinner. It's easy to see why it's my favorite day, isn't it?

The research methods class is fun because of students who discover that research is exciting, much to their surprise. I have to admit, it's not everyone—not even close. But every year there are a few. The musicologists, theorists, and composers already have a feel for this work, and they are good at it. But the saxophonist, percussionist, clarinetist, singer—these students didn't expect to do this, and they certainly didn't expect to like it, so it's exciting when they discover that there's a bit of a thrill in this world of creating knowledge. I also enjoy helping students learn to step up to a higher professional level in their independence, thinking, speaking, and writing. I like seeing them embrace their own possibilities.

I like meeting with individual students in my office hours—hearing what they are interested in, helping them find out how to get where they want to go, getting to know them, seeing them figuring things out. I like being a research coach—finding the questions that help them articulate their own questions and figuring out how to answer them.

My seminar has been fun every week. What could be better than three hours of motet time? But besides that, it's been a pleasure to teach students who are smart, self-motivated, receptive, creative, open-minded, cooperative, and collaborative.

And then the evening ends with motet choir. Tonight we spent a long time in unison singing, unifying vowels, creating perfect unisons, and shaping phrases together. It sounded great, and I am totally happy.

Singing Motets

It is not easy to sing a motet. Everyone has to sing entirely independently, be immaculately in tune and rhythmically precise, and know how to shape a line. There are always decisions to make about accidentals, and it's rare for voices to start and stop together, so finding good starting places for rehearsal is not easy. This year's motet choir is thrilling to work with. We have wonderful voices and commitment. It has been amazing that every week so far this semester, someone has knocked on my office door and asked to audition. In week four, we have put together Mouton's Benedicta es caelorum and his little Ave Maria. There is still a lot of polishing to do, but we can sing straight through pretty well. Next week we'll begin his Tua est potentia, and I hope to do a Tua est potentia mass. We sing music that has not been recorded (to my knowledge), and it is so exciting to hear it take shape. Even though I have a sense of the sound by studying the score, nothing compares with having it in the ear and being able to live with the memory of these sounds. I am most interested in Mouton's use of pre-existing melodies and the way he uses mode and motive. His music is very unpretentious, but extremely artful, to my ear. Thursday is my favorite day--motets all day long!

My Kindle

When Kindles first came out, I thought I would never want to read from one. I like books. But after having a Kindle for two months, I can say that I love it. It's so small and handy. It's so easy to find my place, to read in the dark with the little light on the case, to carry it in my purse, to read clandestinely when I'm supposed to be doing something else that is not to my liking, to have it for back-up at all times in case I have to wait for something, and to get all those free books! I downloaded 30 free public domain novels and bought a copy of King Lear for the book group for 95¢. It's especially great to have the Kindle this year, while we're remodeling and have packed away all the books; no searching! I'm hooked. I actually went in to a bookstore and didn't have to agonize over anything, since I knew I had 30 novels on the Kindle.

First day of school

It took four days for me to feel that the first day of school really happened. Now that both of my classes have met, I have met with my undergrad honors student, and we have already confronted a problem in our faculty meeting, I feel that the school year has begun. The beginning is always full of hope--hope that I will always be very organized and never overlook anything, that I will think of all the most important things, that the students will feel very engaged with the material and bring a lot of energy to the class, that we will always understand each other, that everyone will learn from everything, and that it will feel shiny and new every day just because we love learning and sharing all of our new thoughts and knowledge. That would be so wonderful! But, humans that we are, it's just possible that we might fall short somewhere along the way. If that happens, I hope that we will assume the best and not the worst, give it our best shot, and keep going with good energy. I hope there will be some great moments, some new insights, lots of new music, and that we will remember that we shared all of this happily.

Homecoming

This summer was just as uprooting as most of of the last ten summers have been. This year, Ohio became home base so that I could be near my mother as she recuperated from her exciting appendectomy. I was away from home for most of June and didn’t return until last Monday. Leaving my family in Ohio after our last great week of camping and hanging out together was hard, even though we all needed to get back into our own routines.

The home I returned to was not the one I left. We have packed up most of our furniture and accumulated stuff in order to prepare for the major renovation that our aging ranch home needs. So I came home to empty rooms, including my office. No place to sit and read, no way to figure out where certain piles of papers ended up. I piled luggage and traveling detritus in the bedroom, so it was not serene.

But returning to church today made me feel at home. The familiar faces, warm hugs, great lessons and messages made up for the unsettled home front. Seeing the ward family today helps a lot: there are new babies, new families to learn to know, speculation about who we can get to play the piano for the ward choir, and who will sing. There are also gaps left by those who have left us for new chapters in their lives, and no matter who takes their pew or their calling, no one will replace their unique presence.

I have learned that some people will stay in our lives. The networks that connected us to loved friends in our old wards revive when we are together, when someone has a joy or a sorrow, when we need the conversation that we can have only with a certain person. I sometimes forget that all the people in my past don’t know each other. It is not hard for me to imagine a time and place where all of these come together. That will be a real homecoming!

Keeping it up

So far, I tend to be a stalwart after I start something. I never quit anything except Bluebirds, when I was in fourth grade (I didn’t like the girl whose mother was the leader). So I am going to try to write almost every day, now that I am back in internet land for good. I have thought every day about writing, but it’s hard to decide what to write about—so many possibilities, most of which are probably only interesting to me. I am going to try to just PICK ONE and write. Glen Watkins, one of my most memorable professors, said, “Musicologists are writers. Writers need to write every day.” I know he meant that we should write some musicological tid bit every day, but I am just going to try to keep up my blog.

Attending the sick

I didn't want to begin this blog in the sick room, but in fact, it is attending my very, very sick mother that is giving me the opportunity to do this—and not much else. It's one thing I can do for myself to make use of the snippets of time that lie between hall walks, mealtime pep talks, bathroom breaks, sympathetic listening, refilling the water glass, getting the toothbrush, holding the emesis basin, handing out tissues, hounding doctors, prying information out of nurses, making decisions, reporting to the family, and worrying.

I hate to acknowledge that I am a worrier. It seems so fruitless and pessimistic. I spend my professional life looking far into the past and my personal life stewing about the future. In these pursuits, I am about equally prescient. When my kids would come home a lot later than I expected them, I always imagined them lying in a ditch with a smashed car on top of them. When he did end up under a smashed car, I worried about permanent scarring and organ failure. It all worked out; if anything, the scar adds character. When they started dating, I worried that they would marry the first person who struck their adolescent fancy. When she did, he turned out to be perfect. When they chose college majors, I worried about their happiness in their career path. And when the first job didn't work out, she found a fabulous alternative that has been ever so much better in every possible way. Have I learned my lesson? Not really, but at least I can talk (somewhat) rationally to myself about it.

Despite my worrying, I have learned something about attending to the sick (and I have spent a fair amount of time attending very sick people, some in their last illness). Every person, no matter how sick, still has some health, and that is what I look for. If you can see past the ugliness of the sickness, you can find something attractive, positive, flourishing. It helps me as well as the sick person to relate to their health while attending their sickness. And while I might worry about what the future might hold, I can still be useful in the present.

As a worrier, I tend to take on the problems of other people, feeling that I have a responsibility to fix them. I can get a little crazy about this, actually. I should remember that just as my body cannot fight another person's disease, I cannot absorb or even mitigate the pain of another person's life. I suppose I can't do much more than hand out tissues, fill the water glass, get the toothbrush, hold the emesis basin, give pep talks, listen, and whatever other small thing occurs to me in the moment. The problems remain unsolved, and they continue to belong to someone else, not me.

So I worry that Mom will suffer needlessly, that this healing process will not progress, that she will not be able to return to the independent life that she cherishes, that she does not have the support system that she needs, that she will feel abandoned when I go back to my regular life. And yet, the future will unfold as it will, and it will be decided one day and one decision at a time. All I can do is make the very best decisions that I can, using the knowledge I have, in the moment that I have to make them.

Why a blog?

Every once in awhile I think I want to keep a blog. What's the difference between a blog and a journal? What makes me think I would write on a blog more than I would write in my journal? What makes me think that I should write on a blog rather than work on my book? It must be that I want to tell someone what I'm thinking. Is it self-indulgent? Maybe, but at least I'm not alone in wanting to spill stuff publicly. There are a bunch of you out there revealing yourselves, and I'm going to try joining you.

Why now? Because I'm sitting outside a hospital room waiting for my mom to wake up, but not wanting to wake her. I spend a lot of time in there with snippets of 5 or 10 or 15 minutes when my compulsive self would like to be doing something, but I can't muster the concentration to analyze a motet, make a musical example, or even read a few pages of Middlemarch.

I call my blog "The Good Life" because I think that's what I have. Almost everything that goes into it seems good to me. Not that I don't make colossal errors and commit grievous offenses; of course I do. Sorry everyone. But day to day, I can't think of a single way I would change most of the components of my life. I continue to feel like one of the most fortunate people who has ever lived, and thank you to any of you who may be reading this who are a part of my life. You are essential to my good life. I am not going to deconstruct this paragraph to find its logical inconsistencies, and I hope you won't either, dear reader.