The Way We Were

Day 85: "How old are you, Crow?" a friend asks.

"Too," say I.

"Two?" she queries, and then illogically, "Were you, like, born in a leap year or something?"

"No," I explain. "I'm too...as in 'too old.' Way too old."

And there's the problem. The birthdays keep racking up, and no one ever pulls any out of the pile.

I've found that the older you get, the less likely people are to believe your stories. If they don't write them off entirely as fabrications, they attribute some measure of exaggeration to the tale. I mean, who is going to believe that a little old lady no bigger than a minute was once an alpinist who climbed Mount Rainier six times by five different routes and spent a night camped on the summit? A few still-breathing friends might remember a mean, lean climbing machine who hiked with two-thirds her body weight in a backpack on a twelve-day trip, but new acquaintances are like as not to think, "Uh-huh, yeah, sure you did." Likewise, there are only a handful of people who will recall the harpist who played in the Governor's Mansion on seventeen occasions during Booth Gardner's administration. Chances are, though, that they won't even remember Booth Gardner, let alone the dainty performer whose ethereal notes drifted down from the balcony over his dinner guests...dainty in that iteration, an ice-climber in another. Yes, I was a professional musician for many years.

Music has always been a major focal point in my life. I was trained as a keyboardist, and always have preferred to make music as opposed to listening to it. My primary instrument was harpsichord, secondarily piano, and my tastes ran from William Byrd to Mozart, anything later being deemed as "modern" and not worth my time. The harp was my performance instrument, and most of the pieces I played were original. However, my large harp suffered a fatal injury and I was forced to give it up when I couldn't afford the repair. Today, my home holds a number of musical instruments (harpsichord and piano included), but many of them are "just for fun." If I find myself singin' the blues, it'll most likely be to an accompaniment on ukulele or blues box guitar.