I'll hold my tongue for the moment to avoid another opinionated post.
The cold is slowly creeping in, though it's still warm enough for jackets on most days, the high temperature still lingering between the fifties and forties (Fahrenheit). We've had our first snow, and as usual first snows are, it was more rain than snow, and we only got enough flakes to spot some areas on the ground. We're slowly heading toward the winter temperatures, and there are a lot of things we've got planned for this season.
Choir has started up again, and I was originally asked to play the flute for a piece, but I never got the music. It's also a piece with more parts splitting up, so I don't think the flute part is no longer required, because I'm needed to help with the extra parts.
There are other activities in the plans. We have a movie or two we want to see. One of the movies is a story that is nostalgic for me, because of the few plays I participated in, that was one of them. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was a play I did in a children's community theater group. Since I was among the oldest of the group, I was one of the adults, and my director got a bright idea one day to give quiet little me a challenge. During the fire scene, she had me run on stage and scream as loud as I could, "Fire!" and run of stage in a frenzy. For anyone who knew my quietness, that must have been a great surprise to witness. In fact, that's the play I was in when someone backstage told me she could hear me clear down the hallway, even though the stage door was always closed. I'm not sure if that referred to that particular scene, but it would make sense if so.
It will be two years since my mom passed away at the end of this week and her birthday is next week. The day she died was the day before Thanksgiving. I'll be thinking about her for these next two weeks. I know that for some people it's a struggle when these anniversaries come up, but I'm a strange sort, I suppose, because thinking about and remembering my deceased family tends to comfort me. Perhaps there might be emotion, but playing something with their voice, seeing a picture of them, thinking about a memory with them, it all makes me feel like they're still nearby.
My little brother's birthday is coming up soon in December, so I'll be thinking of him also. He LOVED music. Whenever we were playing it, you could tell he was listening, and if he was particularly into a song in the moment, he would laugh and laugh, occasionally whipping his head about excitedly. I think he appreciated all of the sorts of music we played for him, but he would especially perk up with music from musicals. I've seen him get excited with tunes from the Music Man, The Greatest Showman, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's song Memory. There were several others.
One of my sister's favorite memories of him was a time we were watching a release of the Christmas Concert at Temple Square. They usually have the organ play a number, and in this particular concert, the organist was playing Jingle Bells with a bluegrass group. He was laughing and whip his head so actively that it really looked like he was trying to move to the music. She said that she had never seen him do that before. I'd seen it, but then I've been around him longer. It was really fun for her to see that. In general, because of his inability to effectively communicate normally, he often appeared unresponsive, but that was far from the truth. We loved hearing him laugh.
Speaking of which, I better get some music set up so we can have something to play on his birthday.
 |
| My brother also loved looking at lights, so Christmas lights were perfect for him. This is a photo of him enjoying the lights on the Christmas tree. |
