Roads to Joy

A good friend, after our concert yesterday afternoon, exclaimed that though the music was about love, it was also about loss. She was absolutely right, and I wonder if that commingled pair of emotions is what conspires in my head to elicit tears at a moment’s notice.

The SongWave community performance choir is in full swing this weekend, with two concerts completed and the third and final one to come later this afternoon. There was emotion: deep sadness, great joy, delight in shared sound, laughter at unexpected moments. In short, it was a great sing to be part of.

A couple of us waited outside the Town Hall at St Johns Town of Dalry for the doors to open. Andrew phut-phutted up on his little Raleigh Runabout, and I immediately fell in love with the machine. A day or so ago, another friend reminded me of my beloved garden tractor languishing, unloved, back on the old homestead in the North Pennines. I had to admit that I’ve been enjoying a new toy, our rechargeable Bosch mower, which zips around the garden in about thirty minutes, tidying the straggles of wispy grass that emerge, bravely, from the banks of moss covering the space. We move on. Life carries us along or, as Peggy Seeger wrote in a song the choir sings, Love Call Me Home.

As old as we are, still there are lessons to learn, and I sense that I’m learning some new truths as what I call, hopefully, late adulthood, overtakes. One lesson, unavoidable, is that our bodies are not what they once were; the muscle resilience is not there, and the concerts take more than we’ve thought possible to give. But the joy in the middle of song, as different parts make their presence known, as the number swells toward a resolution. You’d accept a great deal of pain for that feeling.

Life and love are a kind of compromise between hope and despair, joy and sadness. It seems, as I’ve mused before, that you can’t have the one without an experience of the other.

Perhaps, if I had not been besotted with a variety of machines through my life, I would not have noticed the delight of Andrew’s Runabout. I can feel the loss of those machines as keenly as any loss of physical capacity, and yet still look forward with good cheer to the next beloved.

And meanwhile, we’ve got another concert to anticipate! Before, of course, we collapse in a heap this evening. What great fun, what sheer joy, life offers.