Michaelmas is past

Now: Edgar sits on his perch, watching my fingers, and behind him the window streams with the first real downpour of the season.

I haven’t seen any salmon in the Nicomekl yet.  Strange – I was certain that it was last September when I saw so many of them resting in the shallows just underneath the bridge, before continuing their journey upstream.

I actually had a birthday party, and it was fantastic.  I haven’t actually thrown a bash in … oh, four years or so … probably more, come to think of it …  I was overwhelmed; there are people who seem to like me so much in a way I feel I don’t deserve.  I am not the best friend (except to my best friend, heh) … I forget to call … I get swallowed in my work … I neglect.

I wrote something to Mr. Faith to thank him for his influence on my party, and he wrote back: "You need to share your writing.  I was just telling my friend about what you wrote, and how I saw!"

A poem wriggled its way into my "poempoop" file the other night.  It was about the cross-stitch project I found, abandoned, the one I had been working on when I used to go to the Friar’s island regularly.  I used to stitch while he kneaded his bread, and while the loaves baked, he would come sit in the chair opposite me and just … be.  Listening to the little sounds of weather outside the window, and the little sounds of thread being pulled through cloth.  Domestic bliss.

I’m working on the project again.  I finished the two Christmas stockings I started a year ago for my neice and nephew; now I can turn to this old project, and two other newer ones that I’ve started.  I take turns on these three, and watch with satisfaction the tangible results as the pictures grow, colour by colour.

I am doing one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do; but it feels too easy.  I am seeing a counsellour.  He remarked the other day on how numbly I recite my information to him (it’s either that, or laughing like a maniac); he said, "Be prepared for the emotions to surface in a huge way sometime soon."  I said, "I have made a life of re-channelling emotions I don’t like."  And later, "If it seems to you like I’m reciting, it’s because I kind of am; I have been rehearsing this performance in front of bathroom mirrors for years."

(I think of the part in A Severed Wasp when Wolfi says to Katherine, "I could give you a series of exercises to help you control your extreme sensitivity, so that never again would you be afraid to cry in public."  She says, "Oh, would you?" and he says, "No, because it might kill your talent.")

But after that very session, I was a taut string of misery ringing all the long busride home, waiting anxiously to be alone in my room so I could disintegrate.  I had forgotten to ask him the one question I really wanted to.

But, as so often happens in life, the moment I thought I would crumble was when I was called upon to be strong for someone else.  I came home and found my roommate having a flashback to the sadness of last autumn – missing her daughter almost viscerally – but also having new sadness about some perceived problems in her relationship.

(I’m glad I’m doing this now, as opposed to twenty years hence, after ruining a marriage or something.)

And then, work.

Children say to their mothers at the ends of lessons: "Can we have her over for dinner?  Please, Mom?"  Or, "We’re going to the park now – can you come?"

A middle-aged mother comes with shaking hands to lessons to play Chopin and Beethoven – repertoire I barely feel qualified to teach, but love to be rediscovering again.

A four-year-old shows me proudly that she can find Middle C all by herself.

A pre-teen’s eyebrows shoot up as I explain the Circle of Fifths to her.  "Oh, wow, why does it do that?"

And (finally!) I practice alone on my piano in my apartment, rediscovering the whole CONTINENTS of music in me, a tiny step at a time, … and then bus out to rehearsals with Miss J, feel again what it’s like to collaborate with a mature musical mind (as opposed to the students I accompany) …

Just what am I capable of?  It’s fun to dare.

Already October tomorrow …

Mom told me a few days before my birthday: "It smells like the time you were born.  I always remember it when that autumn smell comes back, when it’s still sunny but the colours are starting to change."  This is not like my mom; I look at her and imagine her 28 years ago, waiting for the scheduled C-section in the midst of sending two kids off to school again, and looking after a third child (still a baby) at home.

…

Now: Ms Spur asks me if I plan to throw out the wilted flowers that Mr. Composer brought to my party.  I laugh.  "Oh, goodness …. " and flip a limp stem up and down.  Mr. Composer actually dropped by last night for dinner (very plain: veggie/ tomato soup, cheese toast) and laughed at the flowers too.

(That was good: We watched parts of Mystery Men and then I listened, knitting, while he told me entire decades’ worth of the history of DC comic characters, passionately!  At one point he said something about Batman and I looked at him and thought, "This is Mr. Composer, and I love it!"  Some friends, just by existing, make me grin.)

Ms Spur looks at me over the murky vase, quizzically, and says, "I’ve been thinking that Moosh’s mind is not in her body for the last two weeks or so … "  I say calmly, "I am pretty intensely thoughtful these days," and put the flowers into the plastic bag she is holding out for me.  "But you’ll just have to bear with me, as I bore with you … "  (Last autumn, Ms Spur was unearthing stuff with a counsellour.)  "I get it," she nods.