Roots and Chords

The nature of moving forward

There is a moth frantically dive-bombing the walls and lights in the kitchen tonight.  As desperate as it sounds to my ears, perhaps every moth making a beeline (haha) from one lumen to the next is actually filled with carefree abandon.  But here we are, in the final days of September, and it hit 90 or higher today and a summer insect is careening through my house like it’s June.

Chloe has been a college student for exactly one month. 

I have rarely in my adult life had a busier month, and am relieved to be able to say that the crush of too-much-at-once is behind me.  I would try to enumerate it all here, but that’s not really why I am writing tonight.  I am writing tonight to explain why I did not write yesterday, as I had intended to do – and actually did do.  Until the computer challenged me and I retreated.

One of the factors that has contributed to my busyness is that I now spend Monday evenings taking Rachel to an orchestra rehearsal 45 minutes away (each way).  We go straight from school at 3:10 so that she can have a snack and short homework session before her violin lesson, fit in another study break and a hasty bite for supper, and then orchestra from 6:00 to 8:45.  We finally return home a little after 9:30.  Once the snow season starts, we will get home even later some weeks.  It’s a very long day for her, and for me as well. 

After the first four Mondays, it dawned on me that I could use the time during her rehearsals to write my weekly report to the parents of my students, and also to write my blog.  If only I had a laptop.  I casually mentioned this to Dan last Tuesday, and, computer geek that he is (I assure you it is his own term for himself – in my opinion he is much too well-adjusted socially to be considered a geek) he was willing, even eager, to find me a refurbished model.  Eager, indeed.  I had myself a “new” laptop before the end of the week.  Dan loaded the necessary software and virus protection onto it and presented it to me after lunch Thursday.  Cool!

It happened to be one of my “orchestra weeks” during which my baroque chamber group – this time our concerts involved thirteen performers – spends three days rehearsing for a weekend of local concerts.  This means that I spend several days floating from one rehearsal to whatever classes and lessons I am able to teach to a quick meal and back to the next rehearsal  – happy, usually more than a little stressed, and definitely stretched in terms of time and energy.  So it wasn’t until yesterday, the second concert day, that I actually had a little uncommitted time. 

It was a beautiful day outside.  Sunny, clear, a little breeze, and that little touch of autumn that starts to make itself evident in those days when the sunlight takes on more of a slant.  Since I had spent most of the week inside, I decided I would take advantage of the perfect weather.   I went out in our backyard and settled myself onto a patio chair, a little giddy with the romantic image of working on MY laptop, which I placed before me, small 21^st century altar on the picnic table.  Dan was mowing the lawn and Bella was merrily cavorting between the flying bits of grass and the bees she loves to chase around the raspberry bushes. 

I opened with a paragraph about the splinters emanating from the rough wood of the table, moved from there to Bella’s bee habit, and was just segueing into yesterday’s theme – no small feat, it had taken me so many weeks to be ready to actually put words to paper – when my new ally, my dear refurb, abruptly interrupted with an alarming announcement that something very serious was happening and it was forced to abort all present activities in order to protect itself.

Barely three paragraphs into my fragile beginning, my words were erased.     

It’s not that it had taken that much time to write them.  It’s not even that it was that good.  But in that shattering moment (not quite the blue screen of death, but those big white words on the black screen are a little scary – just saying) I was demoralized.  The universe doesn’t want me to write?  FINE!  I cursed the very laptop I had been worshipping only moments before.  I made an angry and upset show of closing it down, Dan all the while instructing me that I need to use the computer some more so we can see if it happens again.  HAPPENS AGAIN?  I’m going to pour my heart out onto its soulless – not to mention conscienceless – keys again, JUST TO FIND OUT IF IT IS FUNCTIONING PROPERLY?  Which by the way I just expect it to do because THAT’S ITS ONLY JOB AND PURPOSE IN LIFE! 

I’m calmer now.  It didn’t even take me that long to regain my normal heart and breathing rates.  Dan expressed his sympathy for what I lost and I thanked him for showing me that he has much more of a heart than the machine that provides most of our income, as grateful as I am for that.  My higher self knew that I would find a new starting place and compose a new set of paragraphs, and still be able to post a blog within a day or two.  And in the meantime Dan identified a few outdated “device drivers” that may have contributed to the crash.  He is replacing each one with a newer version.  For my part, I will employ the “save” function sometime during the first paragraph from now on, instead of being so cavalier as to trust a mere hard drive with words that often do not come easily.  Lessons learned, little harm done.

By the way, in case you are curious as to the theme of the lost essay, it was this.  For those of you who remember how it felt to go from two to three, from a coupledom to a threesome – how suddenly it hit you that life would never again be the same – exactly, word for word, the phrase that our houseguests, a couple with a one-year-old angel boy – used oh so casually during a mealtime conversation on Wednesday – that is exactly and precisely what Dan and Rachel and I are experiencing.  But this time there is no fanfare.  No shower with gifts.  No sweet bundle to caress.  I can no more retrieve the days behind me than recover the lost words on my screen.  So instead I offer these.  And we all continue forward, since we cannot go back.  

Neither can the moth.  I found it this morning, nestled in the pages of one of Rachel’s violin books for its final rest.