APRIL 5, 2023 – (Cont.) As the directors of food and hunt prize procurements helped Fred pack up the surpluses, the director of communications, pulled me aside. I’d noticed her activity in the thick of the extravaganza but hadn’t had a chance to greet her.
“Hi, Eric,” she said. “You might not remember me, but I’m Denise. We met a couple of years ago when you were walking by . . .”
“Denise! Of course,” I said, with surprise in my voice and eyes, if not visible in my lower jaw, shielded by my mask. “I didn’t recognize you out of context.”
We’d met a year ago early last fall when Illiana and I were walking back from the neighborhood park and playground. Denise and her husband, Ben, were doing yard work as Illiana and I strolled past their house. They greeted us in a manner that invited conversation. The previous summer, when another neighbor, our resident literary savant, “Coach KO Paulson,” and I were walking past Ben and Denise’s house, Ben alone was out front. He and KO exchanged some pleasantries. As KO and I continued, he informed me that Ben and KO’s daughter had been med school classmates. Ben seemed affable, and after KO’s positive statements about him, I looked forward to getting better acquainted with Ben in the future. The opportunity came when Illiana and I stopped to visit with him and Denise on our walk from the park.
KO’s assessment of Ben had been wholly accurate, and Denise turned out to be every bit as sociable. As our conversation unfolded (18 months ago), I learned that she was an accomplished violinist, with impressive training, performance and pedagogic credentials. This information naturally fueled a long conversation about music.
We’d promised to stay in touch, but our paths never did. Plus, I’d taken a detour on my 2022 medical expedition.
At Fred’s house last Saturday, the conversation picked up close to where it had concluded a year-and-a-half before. Except now Denise was on a mission. She’d been busy laying the groundwork for a neighborhood orchestra and wanted me to join. I was awed by her enthusiasm and organizational skill. She’d already recruited an impressive number of neighbors, reserved rehearsal and performance space at a local church, established a schedule and was in the process of filling out the program. She wants to embrace the lowest common denominator, she said, to encourage participation, and is therefore focused on recognizable (and playable) show tunes, not Haydn symphonies or Richard Strauss tone poems.
“I’m the conductor,” said Denise with a laugh, “so I get to choose the music.”
I was all in. A few weeks ago I’d touched my fiddle for the first time in months. The brief session was like blowing the carbon out of the engines of a B-17 but without going anywhere, not even out of the hangar; just scales, arpeggios and a movement of a Bach partita, unaccompanied. After sputtering to life and dispensing clouds of black smoke, the engines coughed their way to 1,000 rpms for a solid 15 minutes—not enough to move stress the chock blocks but sufficient to prove they could spin. Denise’s inspiration is exactly the fuel I need to get the B-17 aloft.
Fred was beaming as he listened to Denise’s appeal and my reaction. He already knew about her project and joked that he was ready to rent a tux so he could serve as the M.C.
Observing that Illiana and I were now ready to leave (all other guests having departed), the kind, cheerful, well-spoken seventh grader greeter—and daughter of the director of communications—retrieved our footwear and outerwear. Thanking Fred and the “directors” profusely, we finally took our leave.
“As soon as we get back to the house,” I told Illiana, “you’ll need to write a thank-you card to the generous host.”
“Okay,” said Illiana cheerfully.
Little did I know that the card, in turn, would lead us to meet Denise again an hour and a half later, just around the corner from our house—followed by a remarkable coincidence (and series epilogue). Stay tuned . . . and in tune. (Cont.)
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
