It’s been a great month! We celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary on the 15th, and it was by far the best in our lifetime so far. Our usual celebration was a nice meal at a good restaurant with some flowers and a card. The whole place turned out in the lobby for stories, with a short bio of our years together orated by Leon Veazey, the Chaplain for Guardian Hospice.
We have become good friends because of our mutual interest in early Christian theology and history. We also share a love of music, with him playing the piano to lead the residents in hymns a couple of times a week. The ladies asked if I would play for their singing, and I had to beg off, because I need a bunch of practice before I try to play along with singers.
I have been trying to practice on the piano out in the lobby when everybody is at lunch. I have played organ for forty years, and the transition back to piano is taking some time. If it is a simple song I can barely play the four parts from the hymnal, but if it gets more complicated I have to revert to chording as I played it on the organ. That sounds awful unless I break the chords up in some fashion, which I am slowly learning to do.
Today when no one was around I started practicing in the afternoon, and after I had finished one of the songs, I heard clapping. I looked up to see eight or ten ladies sitting on the couches appreciating my playing. I must be getting better, I guess. I like my fan base!
My song books are old ones from when I first bought an organ back in 1968, and are taped together from years of use. The songs were old standards back then, so they are really old now. We’re talking songs like “Cocktails for Two”, “Buttons and Bows”, “Cool Water”, “Fascination”, and such. Today I attempted “Satin Doll” and it didn’t sound too bad. I am finding that because I no longer work as a mechanic, my fingers are more flexible, and I can do trills and glisses I couldn’t force my fingers to do before.
On another subject, I am feeling a little ashamed after taking my Mazda3 in for its 90K mile service. It was a major bunch of work, and I requested new plugs and injector cleaning because the throttle was feeling “notchy” and not smoothly linear. When I drove out, the acceleration was instantaneous and smooth. It felt like a new car!
But what really jumped out at me was how quick and tight the steering was again. I vaguely remember getting used to the quick steering on this car after trading in my old Saturn with 300K miles. When I got home I got the maintenance record out, and found one item on the list was tightening bolts under the car.
The exact bolts weren’t named, but I knew with a chill they had to be bolts on the rack and pinion steering. They loosened gradually over time, so you don’t really notice the slight play and looseness in the steering, but I remember driving through a shallow culvert on a city street and feeling a little twitch as the car did a tiny S turn as I drove across - a little sashay - and I wondered if that was part of the active suspension that Mazda is so proud of. No, it wasn’t. I got it in for a fix just in time.
Sometimes lucky is better than good sense, I guess. If the rack and pinion mounts had come completely loose, I would have lost all steering and been along for the ride. I have got to go back and get the details on how close I came.
Darlene, our daughter, is settling into her new apartment by the university, and somedays walks the mile and a half over to Featherstone to visit us and help me take care of Carolyn.
Carolyn is kind of on a plateau - her pelvis has completely healed, but she cannot stand alone. With my help she can stand and walk, but her balance is off and doesn’t seem to be coming back. She leans back instead of forward when she walks, and if I didn’t have a good hold she would just sit down on the floor. But she enjoys trying and we walk a few minutes every day.
Today after we got Carolyn put to bed, Darlene offered to buy some KFC, so we stopped in a got a bucket of chicken. I called Joe to make sure he wanted some, too. We all got together in the old dining room, dragged an old table over to the center, and scrounged up some old rickety chairs I think may have been passed down through the generations from the Tuckers or Burnetts. We will have to do this more often! It was fun sitting around telling old family tales and jokes. Our family has lots of them!
Also this evening Guardian Hospice presented me with a gorgeous photo
of Carolyn and I taken at the anniversary party, and a photo album of pictures taken at the party. I feel so honored and humbled and grateful!
It’s been a great month!
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