Sunday, March 05, 2006

The Last 24 Hours: Singing in French, a Hunting Trip, and a Special Visit

"Recois les chants qu'il offre a ta gloire immortelle
Et de tes dons qu'il retourne comble!"

"Receive our songs, offered up to Your immortal glory,
and may they return laden with gifts bestowed by You!"

Singing in Latin has become "old hat", but this was the first time I had sung in French. A family from France recently moved across the pond to our small town in the Pacific Northwest. Their 20-something daughter who sings in our choir tutored us in the pronunciation and translated the song for us. At the dress rehearsal, she needed me to share my music with her. "You'll laugh at my English phonics written on top of the French," I warned her, a bit embarrassedly. She smiled. Several measures into the piece I saw her do a double-take of one of my scribbles - we both started giggling instantaneously, finding it difficult to stop and carry on with our singing. Friday night our choir performed "Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11" by Gabriel Faure along with the NSA choir. It sounded beautiful...at least to everyone except possibly the French family sitting in the audience.

Saturday at noon, Erin and I went hunting. It was a shorter trip than we usually make, but we were able to bag what we went out for - book treasures - found during the "Buck a Bag" hour of the annual library sale. Erin scored a hardback copy of a P. G. Wodehouse book and a like-new paperback of one of Elizabeth Enright's books. I found a nice hardback copy of Silas Marner. We found several other interesting titles that we did searches for on the Internet after returning home and decided they were definitely "keepers."

After a night of performing and our short hunting spree, I was wiped. Brady and a friend had taken over the living room playing an Internet game on two computers. I went to my bedroom and crawled deep into the covers of my bed. I was not only extremely tired, but I was starting to feel very sick. I rested for a half and hour or so, and then Erin, up from the basement after watching a movie, snuck past the living room and peeked into my room to say "Hi." She came and sat on my bed. Then she started talking. Oh my, I can't remember all she talked about! She had so much to say. Her lively words medicated my weary mind and body. I started feeling a bit better and pretty soon the conversation was a two-way street. We talked for quite a long time until Erin started drooping from all the energy she had exerted. And then we smelled....IT. Brent's first attempt at a cake made from scratch (and Xylitol.) I had begged him to do something about the burnt tortilla smell that had welcomed Erin and me home after the book sale. This was just the ticket-what an aroma! (Yes, and what a guy!) After taking it out of the oven, he left to run an errand, but Erin snuck into the kitchen and dished each of us up a generous slice of warm apple cake. We ate the cake on my bed, feeling like we'd had the most special, yet most "normal" visit we'd had in a long, long time. Conversation followed by cake. Now that's living!

I'm still savoring the deliciousness of the last 24 hours. Mmmmm.......

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! You had quite a day!!!

Tracers

Sherry said...

Tracers,
We sure did. God showed us (Erin and I) on Friday night that our adrenals are working...as we were able to feel better when our adrenaline kicked in after the concert started (thankfully!) Mrs. Mc

Erin said...

That was such a great visit! Any time, darlin'. :)