The rarest sight in the animal kingdom

...all three cats on one couch.

Walk away slowly...verrrry slowly...

My real work with the harp

In this first post of the new year, I could write about all the brightly lit Christmas parties I performed at in December. The warm and beautiful Christmas Eve services filled with carols and candlelight. The New Year's Eve dinner at Naniboujou Lodge in Grand Marais.

But the most meaningful, important holiday "gig" I played for this year was in my own house for my dear friend Lisa.

Lisa has cancer. This may be her last Christmas.

I've known Lisa since 7th grade. I remember walking into Wellcome Memorial High School on the first day of school and seeing her smiling face and her sparkling brown eyes and liking her immediately. And when gymnastics season started in November of that year, Lisa and I got to spend lots of time together, practicing aerial cartwheels and balance beam routines and complaining about leotards riding up our behinds and helping each other into contortionist positions to stretch out our sore muscles. She had the most beautiful back handspring you've ever seen - so arched and graceful and so perfectly rhythmic. She could do them around the gym without stopping. Everyone would quit what they were doing to watch her.

As I got to know her better, I loved making her laugh - a laugh that came from the very bottom of her soul and bubbled up and out in a way I've never, ever heard another person laugh before and may not ever again. We laughed so hard we were shushed and frowned at and had sore stomach muscles the next day. There were slumber parties, gymnastics meets, school dances. All filled with memories of the fun only Lisa could create.

Lisa left Wellcome Memorial in 9th grade to go to school in Mankato. I missed her. Our lives took different paths, different friends. But there were phone calls when we'd make each other laugh practicing our German (me) and French (her) counting: eins, zwei, drei...un, deux, troi. We gossiped about people we knew. And then we lost contact.

Until I looked out into the crowd at one of my earliest holiday concerts and saw her smiling face. She was painfully thin and obviously not well. Afterward, she came up to hug me and I felt her bones under her clothing. She told me then that she had cancer. Cancer she'd fought and beat, fought and beat. But her smile was the same, her pointy little eye teeth poking out over her bottom lip, her sparkling eyes were still bright. It became an annual meeting - the hugs after my concerts.

And then this year I got a text message from her (long, detailed, 5-part text messages are her specialty). Her cancer was back. There was no fighting anymore. She was stopping treatment, getting things in order, seeing all the people she wanted to see. Would I meet her for a drink? Would I play and sing at her funeral? Of course I would. But I made her promise to come over and hear me play anything she wanted, for as long as she wanted, before the funeral came. 

And so she did. Fragile, weak, swollen from medication, but still smiling. I played and sang "O Holy Night" for her. "How Great Thou Art". "Silent Night". I played and played and played and sang, anything she wanted. As long as she wanted.

And in between, we talked. I thought we'd talk about big things - life, death, how she was coping, her medication, her faith, her thoughts about it all. But what we talked about were the very same things we've ever talked about - boys and boobs and makeup and hair. We talked about back handsprings and aerial cartwheels and how much we missed being able to do them without suffering major pain or major injury at our advanced ages. We talked about the gymnastics coach who wouldn't let us use a certain springboard for the vault if we weighed a pound over 120 - and who would announce our weight to us in front of our friends (crazy how that both scarred us for so long). We talked about what we were baking for Christmas: candy, cookies, breads and fudge (her)...nothing (me). We laughed, and I could hear hers bubbling up from the very bottom of her soul still, coming up and shaking her shoulders and making her pointy little eye teeth poke out over her bottom lip.

And then I could see she was fading. It was time for her mom to take her home to rest. But we made plans and promises to see each other again. After Christmas. After the holidays. After things have settled down. Of course, I said. Of course. Anytime.

And we grinned like idiots for the camera.

I watched her mom help her down the icy sidewalk and into the car. She gave a wave and they drove off. I made it back into the house, into the kitchen, before I completely broke down and put my head down on the counter and sobbed. My own mom and our friend Wanda had come over that day, too. We collapsed into a heap for a few minutes and then we decided Lisa would probably kick our asses if she saw us crying. So I poured us shots of my home brew rose liqueur and we toasted friendship, life, all goodness.

I got (5-part) text message from Lisa yesterday. She had a wonderful Christmas. She wondered if I'd gotten the cookie Christmas tree she'd dropped off in my mailbox (so that's who it was from!). She wondered when we can get together again. 

Anytime. Any, any, anytime my friend.

This, people. This is the most important work I do.

The birthday "harpy" hour was wonderful!

Truly, it was. After a flurry of texting my Mom and my fashion guru Ann Rosenquist Fee photos of options, I finally decided what to wear a mere 3 minutes before I had to leave the house with the harp.

Black skirt, sheer split-shoulder top...

...and these shoes. Spectator stilettos given to me by my

wonderful friend-neighbor Nicole Helget.

As I quickly found out, the shoes are meant for sitting and not for walking. There's a term for shoes like this. I learned it from a woman who owns a shoe boutique in Dingle, Ireland: "car-to-bar" shoes. As in, your date drives the car right up to the entrance to the bar, you hobble in and perch on the nearest barstool with your legs crossed so your fabulous shoes are on view, you drink and eat, you make merry, and then you hobble out to the car that your date has pulled up the curb when the night's over. "Car-to-bar." Beautiful.

The very tall heels of these beauties did make it easier for my little feet to reach the harp's pedals, though...

 It was a great evening. The bar was packed. 

Lots of friends showed up, and some cousins, too. 

And bunches of people I don't know.

All of whom sang "Happy Birthday" to me in quite spectacular fashion.

 I was mobbed by fans.

(OK, not really. This groups was just leaving all at once...)

Santa even stopped by to hear me play. With his fianceé, Carol.

(Don't tell Mrs. Claus.)

 I played all my favorite carols and songs.

Loudly. My fingers were very sore. I kept playing...

...with periodic breaks to sip prosecco.

Mmmm, prosecco.

Note to harpists: This is NOT the proper way to sit

when you're playing the harp.

(But after two glasses of prosecco, you won't care...)

 And then there was cake. 

Red velvet chocolate cake made by my Mom.

She makes it for me every single birthday.

I looooooove the red velvet chocolate cake.

(Especially with the champagne...)

And this was the scene on my porch the next morning:

Cake carnage and stilettos dropped at the entrance

and totally forgotten for the night.

 

Birthday "Harpy" Hour

Wednesday is my birthday. And I couldn't imagine sitting home drinking little bottles of (very cheap, very crappy but they do the trick) champagne in a fog of holiday performing exhaustion. In my sweats. And reading glasses. Knitting. Covered in cats.

Yeah. So I concocted a gig. A swanky, classy gig. One at which only the sexiest high heels will be worn. And I needed a new photo for the poster.

Enter my friend, neighbor, famous author and awesome photographer Nicole Helget. She came over with her camera on a Friday afternoon and made me smile, laugh, snuggle the harp, look sultry and act alternately professional, sexy and totally inappropriate.

Here's the final result.

Join me if you're in town. Come to town if you're out of town.

Shoes will be checked at the door to see if they meet sassy standards.

And yes, there were outtakes. Some are unfit for public viewing. But others - OK, I'll share them. I always get the giggles during photo shoots.

Especially when little bottles of (very cheap, very crappy but they do the trick) champagne 

are cracked open at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Is it hot in here, or is it just my shoes?

Yep, it's my shoes.

If anybody else put their foot on my harp like this, I'd break their leg.

I'm dreaming of a non-icy Christmas so it's easier to load the harp in cute shoes...

la la la laaaa...

I'm so funny. I crack myself up.

Jingle Belle loves cute shoes. (I should have used a lint roller on those pants, I realize now...)

I love my harp. I love champagne.

I'm serious, people. Come to Number 4 Wednesday night to celebrate with me.

Star sponsor

Hi, all.

I'm the "sponsor" of style guru Ann Rosenquist Fee's Fashion Tarot post today.

Visit her here: http://annrosenquistfee.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/anns-fashion-tarot-the-star/http://annrosenquistfee.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/anns-fashion-tarot-the-star/

And then leave me a comment and your email address and I'll send you a free gift - an unreleased mp3 of one of my original songs.

Yours in fashion divination,
Amy

And then, an acceptance letter...

How quickly the tides turned!

I'm so thrilled that the Briar Cliff Review has accepted my essay for publication. I'd submitted it to a nonfiction contest, which it didn't win, but it was a finalist. Most importantly, they want to publish it. I'm going to be published!

When I got the news, Mom and I were Christmas shopping in the cities. I stood in a flower shop we love, reading my email on my phone. "The Briar Cliff Review wants to publish my essay," I told Mom. "That's good news, but I need you to look at this ribbon right now - will it go in my bedroom?"

Yep. Mom keeping me humble.

The essay is about my brother and me and our vastly different relationships to the same element: wood. I finished it on his 40th birthday. I let Jeff read the essay before I submitted it. He disappeared for a good hour and then shouted up from the basement, "Good work, Amy." It's hard and a little scary to share these kinds of insights and emotions with someone. I'm glad he liked it. When I called to tell him the essay was accepted, he told the guys at work on the construction site to quit hammering and shut off the saws so he could hear all the details. THAT's brotherly excitement.

The issue with my essay will publish in May 2013. My next big task (after the holiday playing rush is over) will be to head back to this laptop and finish some other essay-poetry-memoir ideas I started back in late October. One of them will be a flash nonfiction piece. I've never written flash anything, but I think it will be a good challenge.

My immediate task will be to toast the Muse of Acceptance Letters with a little bottle of (very cheap, very crappy, but it does the trick) champagne.

If you have to get a rejection letter...

...I hope it's as nice as this one.

I've been sending out some of my writing to contests and publications recently. I've had fingers crossed and been checking the mailbox and my email during breaks from performing, waiting for news.

I'm new at this submission thing. I haven't submitted anything for publication seriously since college. Then I got a harp and then, well, you know...

So putting my personal writing out into the world has been a little scary. It's exciting, though. It's a new road for me to travel, a different focus than my solid harp career, something I'm "emerging" with rather than continuing with as always. I like the feeling. I like the uncertainty. It's good to emerge with new art periodically in our lives, I think. It keeps us fresh (and humble).

And I love the feedback - "we very much enjoyed reading your essay" and "your piece flowed smoothly and inspired lively debates among our staff."

Onward. More mailbox and email checking in the next few months. Fingers crossed when I'm not playing holiday music. Wish me well!