June 9, 2019 – Cold Celebration, part 2

If you haven’t, you might like to read the blog post “Cold Celebration, June 7” because, here, I return to that day.

I was miserable, you might recall. Packed sinuses, runny nose, cough, fatigue—but, if you read “Cold Celebration,” you know that. Now, the rest of the story. 

At some point necessary to earth’s rotational rules, while the side I live on remained a few hours short of light, I should have been sleeping. I wasn’t. I moved from bed to computer, wrote “Cold Celebration,” and posted it to the blog. A few hours later, David shuffled into consciousness, and found me “sofa settled with Small Dog.” We exchanged morning misery reports, and laughingly acknowledged our 61st wedding anniversary. Then, in the morning light, I slept.

9:30a.m. 

“Barbi, wake up,” said David. 

Well, sure. I can do that. He must have a reason to rouse me from sleep, so, I try. Small dog stretches. I unravel myself from the twist of a lap robe and the fuzzy green bathrobe wrapped round me. My head aches, but from a muddled brain and behind closed eyes, I am aware that David holds my hand. You know, tenderly. I would have begun to wonder about that, but David’s voice diverted the direction of my mind.

“What do you hear?” he asked.

“Cellos,” I said.

Oh! Wait! Now I am waking. The room is filled with the sound of cellos, my favorite musical instrument. My eyes open. I sit up.  Music swirls in the room, as does my search for a source. 

“What? Where?” I ask the man who holds my hand and grins with delight.

“Here’s a hint,” he said. “I had to open the window to hear it.” 

I stand. Baffled. He’s right. Harmonious sound seeps through the window. I look out and I see a gathering of friends standing on the lawn below our second-floor windows; smiling friends, seemingly slightly giddy—but none playing cellos. I look left, to a nearby neighbor’s balcony, and I see what you saw pictured with this blog entry (if you went to pinewordworks.com). Cellos. Two of them, under the mastery of a brother and sister duet.

“Oh!” The gasp owned me; the reality hurt. Thank goodness for the sofa near enough to receive my crumpled body. I fell to it. I neither invited nor controlled the sobbing that escaped my throat. It is the unexpected presence of beauty that I can hardly bear. This is way, way, way too wonderful. The voice of a cello. One long bow, strings stretched taut and held captive by pegs and saddle, a body of wood that itself is held captive by a spike, and by the knees and hands of a skilled musician. The magnificent sounds of two cellos flies through my being, flies into space and into the space where friends stand listening, flies to the forest nearby, flies with the swallows picking bugs from the air, and I wonder, do they swallow the sound as well? The beauty. The surprise. The overwhelming weight of joy. David’s love. I’m a mess, a blubbering mess; the right kind of mess. Conjoined—my head hurts and my heart heaves with gratitude. Head colds and cellos. So like the realities of life—a mix of misery and magnificence, of sorrow and joy, of possessing and losing.

Go find a recording of baroque music played by cellos, turn the volume to the point that it captures you entirely, close your eyes, listen, and join the best 61st wedding anniversary celebration – ever.