An Athens Moment

It is a December evening in the First Presbyterian Church on the corner of Court Street. Court is Athens’ main drag, named for the county courthouse kitty-corner from here. I’m sitting in the alto section to sing in Handel’s "Messiah," indulging in my annual fantasy that I am a musician making a positive contribution to this ethereal piece of music. The reality check in this situation is that I sing well enough to get by, safely "blended" in all the other voices. I am in the front row. I have a good strong singer is behind me so I have no fear; I am eager and ready. Rob is in the audience in the company of his good buddy Ben. Rob has an array of very nice friends here, many of whom are in Scouts with him or in Jazz Band or wrestling. Ben is the least doofy of these friends and I am glad he wanted to come along, because many of said friends are not capable of sitting three hours on a wooden pew. Their Jazz Band leader will be the trumpeter for The Trumpet Shall Sound, so Rob and Ben, who already respect him as a teacher, are here to check him out as a performer. (Also he will sign the program for extra credit at school). Greg is home tonight, grounded for not picking up his shoes from the middle of the floor. Oh, well…these things happen…sometimes it’s Rob on the hotseat, sometimes Greg; must be part of being a teenager. They are both boys with good grades and good friends and a fairly good balance of "extra-curricular" activities and free time; their parental units are thankful and proud.

Also in the audience I see Doug and Jen, members of my current gaming group. Doug is a feisty and cheerful GM with two fingers firmly on the entertainment heartbeat of this group. Doug and Phil work along the same hallway and have lunch together a lot. In another of the Weird Entanglements that make the move to Athens seem like karma, Doug went to college here. Worked for Phil at Cintech in Cincinnati. Became friend. Lunches together. Was thrilled that Phil would work at OU (Cintech, it seems, had NO happy employees). Got a job here as a techie making the telephony run right. Friends again. Hooray! Lunch again. Turns out he kinda missed role-playing…Phil even plays with us.

I do not see my boss in the crowd. I hadn’t told him I was singing. Geez, Ron and Becky and I are crammed in the same little room every day of the week; I’m OK with not seeing them for two days. Ron has a small entrepreneurial business which helps inventors find manufacturers for their inventions. Most of our clients find us via the Web (http://www.docie.com). The general concept of the business is a lot cooler than the specific work which is done to accomplish the business. But I like the strategic phase when we decide how to present the concept to manufacturers and the information-gathering stage where I go to stores to discover compatible products. This job is only a few blocks from home and the hours are very flexible. This business is Ron’s life. He wants to do something of significance. His Big Project is with a doctor who may really have the first blood test for breast cancer. How I came to work for him is another Athens Story. His son was on my Odyssey of the Mind team last year, then he coached Greg’s soccer team. During the post-season parent-kid game he said he was impressed by my "aggression to the ball." Whatever.

The OU students are gone from Athens between Thanksgiving and New Year so I do not see many of the people I know through the local Medievalist hobby group. I like wearing odd outfits, I like dancing in a long swishy dress, and I like both the research and the handwork part of making creatively historic clothes. We also do educational projects: Greg’s class did their Medieval unit with our help in making costumes, making authentic food, and demo-ing Correct Period Clothes. Last summer I entered an embroidered 11th-century style gown in the national-level SCA competition, and took a first. This is not the same as first place. It means all the entries were graded on a point system and mine was in the highest group, like getting an "A." Since I’m working now I doubt I’ll have time to produce another "A" piece, so I’m real pleased with that one. Dreaming, of course, takes relatively little time. Hmmm. Something with back laces, I think, and some fur. Anyone know how to tan hides?

While I do not see them in this audience, in the next week Greg’s teacher from last year, a neighbor, and a check-out worker at the grocery store will comment that they saw me singing. Now for those of you who live in a smallish town, or who have lived in one place a long time, this may not seem remarkable, but for me it’s thrilling in a slightly scary way. What else have they seen me doing, I find myself wondering, though Athens seems a pretty safe place to wear clashing colors. Athens seems like a great place to do many things I’ve had on my "someday" list (like learning to tan hides.) This last summer I took a Reiki class from my cousin and am now an official energy healer. Does it work? I am still gathering evidence. It seemed to help Rob’s back he strained this summer. I have not had the major black-and-blue results I would have expected from several of my collisions with doorknobs, desk corners, and the other bits of reality which I am constantly checking. On the other hand I have had the usual colds.

The soloists are stepping onstage. The bass and viola have to get offstage to let them get by, a shuffling of scarce resources which also seems Very Athens. The conductor steps up. This choral group is a merger of two well-trained church choirs, but I called him and told how I’d been doing this for so many years, would he please let me join in, and he said Yes. He’s smiling now. He doesn’t know that he’s going to forget to signal us to sit down after one chorus, so we will stand in perfect silence for two long arias. I don’t know that I’m going to skip over one of my sticky-tabs in my score and rise serenely with my book open to the wrong place, become flustered and miss the entrance. Small goofs, no problem. Like most of this last year, tonight will be an evening of listening for cues internal and external, of being there at the right time mostly, of searching for joy in smallish things. I like being here. I like this time of my life. I hope I am using it wisely. We rise. The altos have the first notes, right in the middle of our range. Some choruses I sing confidently and well; others, I only hope to have my mouth open at the right time. So it goes. We sing.

Hallelujah!