If only

We pulled the music back out yesterday, me and the kids, a whole great big stack of it.  Mostly things I can't believe I used to play, case in point, the piece above.  I used to play it flawlessly, without a thought, without thinking it was any big deal at all.  Only now do I realize what I once had because I've lost it all.  All that breath, all the tone, only the memory of how to play the notes still lingers, indelible in my brain and fingers from so many years of playing. 

But the music will be with me forever, stirring in my head, I am drawn to it, I rise and fall with the melodies, they bring back memories and feelings long forgotten.

Frustrated and dissapointed I picked up the guitar instead, a softer, gentler sound and deep.  My fingertips are numb today from plucking along with youtube, and I marvel at how easy it is now to access a simple lesson.  I am not good.  I am a novice with an ear.  It's a place to start.

The girls marched around the house the rest of the afternoon with the mouthpiece of my flute, trying to see if they could produce a sound other than a squawk, surprised that their mother knew how to do more than make dinner, do laundry and apply band aids.  And I have come to know myself in a different way too, regarding something I never took the time to look back very closely upon but knowing always that it was there, this other side, this other world.

So now I try something new, it's never too late they say, but of course what I'd really love to be able to do is play like this...