Redemption

Today I had the opportunity to accompany my friend Nathan as he played the cello. He is a wonderful cellist and I love to listen to him play.

And it was a chance to redeem myself, if only for myself.

A couple of years ago I had this same opportunity. We practiced a couple of times during the week (I remember that vividly - he pulled out the cello and showed it to Rachael, who was probably 18 months old or so, and she cried when he played it. Probably not the reception he was expecting.). We practiced early in the chapel. I don't like to turn pages in the middle of playing (too many pages that have flown clear off the piano that way), so I copied the music and laid it out across the piano. It stayed that way until we were in the middle of the performance, in the middle of sacrament meeting, at which point the pages started falling off the piano. I could NOT recover them gracefully... we ended up completely stopped in the middle and restarted from some agreed on place. Never in my whole life have I wanted to be swallowed up into the floor like I did in that moment.

So today, even thought I dropped a couple of notes, it was an otherwise lovely performance. We stayed together. We ended at the same time.

And I used copious amounts of tape.


Postscript...
Fortunately for me, Nathan takes moments like these in stride. He doesn't take himself too seriously. Obviously.