cancer – day 388
I played my flute this afternoon, at a neighbor’s music party. It was a nice little party; I didn’t play any difficult music. And then this piano player who was there, well, it turns out she’s really an outstanding accompanist and she could sight read the piano parts to my easy flute solos, so we did a little of that too and that was jut plain fun for all of us I think. It was really nice to play with someone who understands and does play with the other musician, instead of just banging out technically correct notes and volumes. It was actually really beautiful. We played Ave Maria (with a few missed flats here and there from trying to read such small print from behind a piano player), and it was just moving! Strength, delicacy, mournfulness, praise, exaltation. What an amazing work.
One gentleman made a point of talking to me during a little break, and again at the end, to tell me that my playing really moved him and that it had been a long time since someone’s music had done that for him. Later he was really trying to encourage me to start up with or create some music group because he thinks I should do more to share this gift with others, but I demurred. If I have something of a gift for music, I want to treat it like a gift and not make it into work.
I did agree with the group, however, that it would be great fun to have a little dance class the next time we have a music party. They took it so far as to suggest that I start “Dance on the Divide,” but I didn’t jump on that bandwagon either, I just reiterated what fun it would be to do a little dance class with this little gathering of neighbors, not necessarily start a new series of dance classes out here.
We never talked about my cancer at all. It’s not something I bring up in conversation unless directly warranted, though of course the party hostess knew about it, from meeting my parents last summer. I don’t know if she mentioned it to people at all after I left or not. I think it was by and large unknown to the group.
We were talking about dancing and dancing movies, and I told them about Robert Duvall in Assassination Tango and how he’s all fascinated with the tango in real life. One couple was really excited to see the movie, and she said she was going to go put it on her netflix list as soon as she got home so they could hopefully get it this week. Well, this was during a little break when everyone was eating and chatting, so I excused myself for a couple of minutes and went home to get my copy of the DVD to loan to her. I put one of my dance cards inside so she’d have my phone number/e-mail when she was ready to return it.
Then tonight I got an instant message through my blog site. I didn’t really think about the fact that I had added my blog address to the bottom of my cards after I was diagnosed, but I’m pretty sure it’s there in the fine print somewhere. So here’s this person who saw me with all the joyfulness of my musical demeanor, and not a clue that my fingers were on fire or my feet were slicing me with little shards towards the end. When my energy ran out, it happened really suddenly, and I excused myself almost immediately, as politely as possible, and limped to the Jeep to roll the half-mile back home, glad I’d taken Rubi instead of walking. I got home at 7PM and saw that my mom had called but was honestly too wiped out to even have a brief phone conversation with her. I did manage to play an hour of WoW at 10PM though, after laying on the couch doing nothing for a few hours. 🙂
I remember one of my World of Warcraft friends commenting on my blog once that it was so strange to read about the neuropathy burning in my hands and feet because the Cynthia he knows throws fireballs from her hands (my mage throws fire and ice and arcane magic in battle). Ah, the irony . . .