The first time Mom and Dad brought me to New York City, I stood in Grand Central and cried.  We were only five minutes off the train, and I pleaded for us to turn around and get on the next one going back upstate.  I was twelve, and totally aware that my behavior was most uncouth.  I didn’t care.

I think that was the moment we all recognized that I wouldn’t stray far from my upstate roots.  I traveled the world, but I never stayed in any city for very long.  And I was especially keen to avoid NYC whenever possible.

But these last few weeks have been transformative for me.  I’ve loved the diversity, the acceptance, the social miracle that so many millions of people can, basically (with relatively very few exceptions, statistically speaking) get along in such a small space.   I’ve loved the parks, and the friendliness of their song birds.  I’ve loved that my husband is getting the best care in the world for his prostate cancer.  

Even more surprising to me has been the fact that home life has presented such a challenge.  Initially, my plan was to come to NYC as little as possible, because I couldn’t tear myself away from my upstate loves — the woods, my family, my business.  But what I found I needed most was to be near Bob while he went through this.  And so I condensed home life to just a few days each week.  All work, homeschooling and household errands have been bottlenecked into 48 and 72 hour episodes, where I sleep little and run constantly, until I can find my way back down to the city.  

Where most people live harried lives in the city and retreat to the country on weekends “to rest,” I am doing the opposite.  Life at home in the country is hectic.  Life in the city is calm.

All afternoon, after Bob has completed his treatments, we play across the New York, walking neighborhoods, meeting friends for coffee, meandering through the parks, visiting museums.  Then we retreat to this apartment where we sit by the window, sip wine, listen to music and watch the city lights, counting the new Christmas trees that pop up in neighboring windows.  There are fresh comfortable spaces in our dialog.  There is room to just be in the moment before the next topic of conversation emerges.  

And to our mutual surprise, we both wonder how we will return to comparative frenzied pace of our daily rural life.

This last spate at home had me particularly frazzled, because it required that I stay behind for an extra 24 hours for a jazz concert. 

On the day Bob got his cancer diagnosis early last summer, my best friend from high school, Louis (I call him Luigi) Smaldone showed up at my house with his wife, Kristina.  They plunked a beastly baritone sax on our kitchen table.  I hadn’t played in over 30 years, but when Luigi and I were teenagers together, our relationship centered around jazz.  He was in love with his upright bass, and I was in love with a borrowed baritone sax.  As high schoolers, we talked our way into the local college jazz ensemble.  I eventually left the bari behind to go on to college to study creative writing, and then sustainable agriculture.  He kept his base with him and never let it go.  He met Kristina, and she became the next director of the SUNY Cobleskill jazz ensemble.  And now, at this turning point in my life, they showed up to invite me back into that world.

I’d be lying if I told you I was recruited as a ringer.  It was a compassionate recruit.  I could barely get a sound out of the horn.  

They welcomed me anyhow.  Then they welcomed Saoirse to come sing with the ensemble.  

At our weekly rehearsals, I became acquainted with the motliest group of musicians I’ve ever known:  SUNY Cobleskill alumni who joined the jazz ensemble forty and fifty years ago and never left; local music teachers who just want to have fun; folks like me who hit a bend in the road of life and were connecting with something that brought joy; college students seeking their liberal arts credits, and professional musicians who just really want to share their love with the rest of us.  It was the first time I experienced really really really good musicians willingly sharing performance space with truly terrible musicians.  There was no mockery, no complaint.  It was pure community.

And this week, we had our end-of–semester concert.  

Audience members were few and far between.  The seats in the theater were peppered with friends and loved ones who came out because they knew the stories behind the performers…what brought us to that moment together to make our best attempts to play the tunes. There were some moments when we didn’t sound half bad.  There were moments when we sounded truly awful.     But as I sat up there on that stage with this community of musicians, every moment was beautiful to me.  In the dissonance, I heard the stories I’d learned about each person in the ensemble. It was the stunning noise of life.  That’s jazz.

Afterward, I packed up the beastly bari and the girls helped me lug it out to the car.  We drove away that night, and I mentally prepared to head down to NYC in the morning to be with Bob.  But there was a major shift in my heart.  I was reminded why I will be joyful to go home again. We will go back to hosting potluck jam sessions at our house on the edge of the forest, jazz ensemble will resume meeting in January.  City lights will be replaced with starlight and firelight, and our family and friends will be there, ready to go on making music. 

 

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