Today we went to an orchestra concert held at a local nursing home. Son#1 took up the violin this summer and has been playing in this orchestra. The official summers-end concert will be held on the 17th, so they went to the nursing home as a dress rehearsal, of sorts.
The kids sounded fabulous! For just a bunch of kiddos, the music they played gave me goose bumps. They are a very talented group. It was very interesting to play at the nursing home. I keep looking around at all of the residents who had come down to the lunch room to hear them play. None of them had come down on their own power, all were in wheel chairs. Most were old, all had broken down bodies or minds or both. All that kept going through my mind as I sat in the middle of the group was “Look at these PEOPLE.” Broken down minds or bodies or whatever, they were people. I wondered who they really were, how they had ended up here, what were their stories? Oh, I wish I knew. I wish they could tell me. I looked at the young ones playing on stage. I looked at the old ones sitting in their wheel chairs. It just broke my heart. It was so sad and beautiful all at the same time. The old ones were young once The young ones will eventually be old.
When I was looking for a place to sit, one of the gals in a wheel chair waved me over to her. I pulled up a folding chair next to her wheelchair and sat down. She grinned at me and stuck out her hand. I grabbed it, thinking she wanted to shake it. She pulled my hand up to her mouth and kissed it. I grinned back at her and pulled her hand up to my lips and gave it a loud smacking kiss. She looked surprised and then flashed me a big grin again. She sat and swayed to the music and waved at the players and the director and at anyone who walked past the dinning room. Out of the corner of my eye, I'd catch her looking at me. If I turned a little and made eye contact with her, she’d grab my hand and kiss it and I’d kiss hers back. Then we had a staring, grinning, kissing contest going on for awhile. She would never applaud but instead she’d wave her appreciation to the orchestra.
She never once spoke, she never once stopped grinning her almost shy, gentle grin. I stood up, told her my name and how much I enjoyed sitting next to her. She just grinned and kissed my hand again and let me walk away.
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