Carried away

As I sat in the pew, alone, I grew weary of my own rose-colored-stained-glass-window smile. You have one, too. The one that comes out when you just need something to run interference between you and all the well-intentioned people that ask how you’re really doing. Because when you don’t know how you’re really doing, trying to answer that question is neigh unto impossible. And somehow “I’m being an emotional female” doesn’t quite cover it, either.

I have one thought on my mind: I want to go home and play my flute and be sequestered for a while. Surely that will make me feel better. How many times has my flute been my refuge? I remembered it being an out for me as early as junior high, when my nickel-plated student instrument was subject to my clumsy fingers and teenage frustrations. That was the same flute that came with me to hundreds of marching band practices in high school, and the early competitions as well. My current instrument, a beautiful Gemeinhardt 3SHB intermediate-level open key silver-plated flute, was a Christmas present my junior year of high school, right before concert season started. This is the flute I played when I was first chair, when solos where assigned… as an SAT study break and a repose while considering what college to attend.

D.C. life hasn’t allotted much time for practice, but I have tried to play when possible. And at moments like this, when I just want something to help me sort out my thoughts, I go for my flute. So I rain on my roommates’ parade of wanting to walk to Starbucks after church and say I want to go home. They were good enough to comply with my crankiness, and off we went.

I get up to my room, which I “remodeled” (rearranged furniture) this weekend, and assemble my flute. I put it to my lips and start warming up… and realize something it off. It’s been a while since I’ve played, so I furrow my brow and try to correct my ombisure. No improvement. It was then I realized the plug for my third right finger was gone. What that means, with an open key flute, is that if you haven’t practiced much with the key open, your whole sound is off. Awful, in fact. And I couldn’t find my plug anywhere.

I decided to try to play anyway. My poor roommates. I sounded terrible. And I was so frustrated because all I wanted to do was play to vent my frustrations, and playing was only making matters worse.

Then the rain started in earnest. Have you ever had those times when you wonder if maybe your moods affect the weather? Oh, I know it doesn’t, really. The converse is more likely to be true. It is just somehow helpful to think that the Master of the weather knows the tears we cry (and all the ones we hold back) and condescends to cry along with us. I used to question whether the Man of Sorrows was acquainted with the sort of grief I bear from time to time. I don’t question that anymore for some reason. He’s become too real for me to question that.

In any event, I grew increasingly frustrated. I wished I had learned to play full open key back when I first got my flute. I wished I could find the plug. I wished I could just play and sound beautiful and let some hymn or Celtic tune carry me away. I wished my ring finger would just grow another quarter of an inch so it could reach the key more comfortably.

It didn’t, and I didn’t, bringing me to yet another end of myself.

I did manage to create a makeshift plug out of the poster tacky in Sarah’s desk. That allowed me to play normally without sounding horrible. I closed my eyes and let the music flow, into the crashing of a summer storm. The cool of the silver keys against my fingertips, tickled lightly by the air flowing through the delicate instrument, the chilling satisfaction of a sweet melody played in the low register.

And for a moment, I was carried away.