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September 5th, 2010 :: Extraordinary Days We were living in Boston on September 11th. I was at school when the terrorist attacks took place. We canceled classes and lessons and I made my way home to join my husband in front of the television. We watched the story unfold on two levels: nationally and locally. Names of the victims on the two planes from Boston begin to be released---this would continue for weeks. I was strangely detached and numb from the stories, and yet I felt shaken by the geographical and social proximity to these events. There is no denying that this felt different than it would have if we still lived in the midwest. We did not personally know any of the victims, but there was not the infamous six degrees to separate us from many people whose lives were changed forever.
I felt only fear. In the days immediately after, we heard rumors that Boston was to be the site of more attacks. I woke up in the middle of the night shaken from nightmares about bombs going off in the Prudential Center or in the Hancock Tower. The sound of sirens sent chills down my back. My heart pounded in my chest for weeks. I was not interested in war or revenge. I was interested in getting the hell off the East Coast. I wanted to get in a car and drive west to Kansas. Or north to Quebec City. I was not proud of my lack of courage in the face of these events. I was not proud of my impulse to flee. But there it was; I was scared. I wanted to run away.
As time went on, something shifted. While we were newcomers to Boston and had moved to there on a whim and a prayer, about the time the second twin tower fell, we went from being explorers of a new city to simply living there. The tragedy made us claim our lives. We weren't outsiders anymore to the issues at school or at work. Instead, we started to feel invested: I wanted to hear about Natalie's problems with her boyfriend. I cared about the recital policies at my schools. I was invited to participate in meeting with parents and elementary school psychologists trying to determine Jack's learning disability. I was concerned that Julie hadn't learned to read music. "It is in the shelter of each other that the people live," says the Irish proverb. Nine years later and two thousands miles away from the site of so much tragedy, my perspective has changed again. Last weekend we had the seniors in Matt's youth choir over for dinner. This is an annual tradition, a small rite of passage in both their lives and ours. I was in the kitchen fussing with dishes when I overheard the kids talking about their memories of 9/11. It was strange listening to them. After all, they were 7 years-old and living across the country from the center of the events on that day. And yet, every major national decision since that time has been made under the 9/11 cloud. It is, of course, the most important world event of their lives, but one they remember very differently than I do.
"This will be our reply to violence," Leonard Bernstein said after the assassination of John F Kennedy, "to make music more intensely, more beautifully, and more devotedly than ever before." All is not right in the world and will never be, I think, as I go about my life, tending and caring for the small corner of the universe I call home.
April 11th, 2010 :: Extraordinary Days  We have been suspicious this winter that we might have mice. I shudder to even write that sentence, and lately with the weather beginning to warm up, I had been hopeful that our days of rodent cohabitation are over. In recent weeks the cats have not been spending long hours guarding the baseboards; there has been no tell-tell rodent evidence left behind for a while now. Things have been looking up. Then, several weeks ago, Matt was out of town for a few days judging choirs in Las Cruces. When Matt is gone, the cats sleep with me, something Matt doesn't usually tolerate since sleeping with the cats means a fair amount of not sleeping at all, due to their antics. In the middle of the night, I wake up to hear a loud crash in the study. Godiva went flying off the bed in search of the party, which immediately told me this was not a break-in, but rather feline-initiated chaos. "Uh-oh," I thought to myself, "they are chasing something." And I promptly fall back asleep. The next morning I was stumbling around the house with my first cup of coffee (barefoot!), when I stepped on something squishy. It was a chewed up-mouse, just waiting for me on the rug under my desk. I screamed. Loudly. I screamed again. The cats looked alarmed, and Yun-Sun ran away guiltily. After I screamed some more, I scooped up the dead critter, (all the while thinking how very much it looked like the grey toy mice around here, only with blood and entrails hanging out), and resumed my morning routines. About an hour later, I went to the piano to begin my practicing for the day. Under my piano bench was another---another!!!--half-consumed mouse. This was unbelievable. The cats have lived quiet, sheltered (boring, they would tell you) lives for the last 5 years under our roof. Other than the annual trips to the vet, they have never even been outside. I would not have thought they would even know what to do with a mouse, let alone successfully murder two in one night. I will never be able to look at them the same way. ("Those blog entries just write themselves, don't they?" Matt said, when I called to tell him about our night of mayhem and carnage.) Of course no one needs to remind me that this aggressive behavior is exactly what I had instructed them to do earlier this year when the mice first appeared. I just never dreamed they would take me so literally, or more to the point, leave their carcasses exactly where I would trip over them. "Yep, that's what cats do," a friend tells me later when I share my horror. "They leave them as trophies where they know you'll find them." "Could they have possibly picked better spots?" Matt remarks. "Your desk and your piano. They've got your number, Amy." But I am still traumatized by the whole thing. I can't sit by and do nothing and hope that this is a one-time only killing spree. "What do I do now?" I ask another friend. "Nothing," she replies. "Your cats are doing just fine. They are taking care of business for you."
Now every morning, I put on slippers as I get out of bed and cautiously search the house for any dead rodents. My cats have never looked so well fed.
December 13th, 2009 :: Extraordinary Days My favorite time of the year, bar none, is the week of Thanksgiving. In particular, I love the two or three days right before Thanksgiving, when the holiday weekend is still ahead of you, pregnant with anticipation and all good things. Like pie .
 I never teach much this week, and Matt always takes off some extra days, giving us the gift of empty time together. Our shared history has included some wonderful pre-holiday days. There was the year (when we were dating) that we went to see The Remains of the Day at a Westport movie theater in Kansas City, and when we got out of the movie, it was snowing, creating a magical hushed suspense over the world. Another year we were living a comfortable existence in Ft Worth but were spending every spare moment daydreaming about leaving our of familiar predictable lives and moving to the East Coast. ("This is our one and only life," Matt kept reminding me.) That Thanksgiving we had a perfect trip to Boston, getting standby seats (those were the days!) on Wednesday, and arriving in time for a big lunch in Chinatown. We spent the afternoon wandering through the Boston Common and Beacon Hill, chasing strangers carrying pie boxes as they climbed the cobblestone hills. I fell for Boston hard that visit, my heart and soul sighing, "Home" as if I recognized it from some previous life. As a mid-westerner, how could I know that New England was my true home? I swore then that I'd spend every Thanksgiving in Boston for as long as I lived.
Of course, I haven't. Although by the following Thanksgiving we had sold two cars and our wedding china, and were living in Boston in a tiny apartment around the corner from Fenway Park, that year we rented a farm house in New Hampshire for the weekend. On our way up, we drove through a dangerous early season snowstorm in a bad rental car. We spent the weekend snowed into that classic white farmhouse. (The woods are lovely, dark, and deep......Matt murmured in my ear when we finally arrived, toasting New Hampshire's famous poet who lived just down the road.) Icicles as long as my arm hung from the windows. We kept a fire going the entire four days, made soup, drank wine, read piles of books, and listened to the snow plows trying to dig us out from the haven of a cozy bed covered with a pile of quilts. I think I took three hot baths every day. It was heaven.
 Snow is a recurring theme among my fondest Thanksgiving memories. Another Boston Thanksgiving my sisters came for a visit: Beth from Los Angeles and Sarah from New York. They arrived on Tuesday, and we woke the next morning to discover that during the night we had gotten several feet of snow. It was breathtaking, and so quiet. We walked for hours through the snow, up and down streets with no traffic, stopping for cappuccinos in an Italian coffee house on Newbury street. To date, my favorite picture of us might be from that afternoon, bundled up in coats, gloves and hats, grinning at the camera from the middle of a snowy Commonwealth Avenue.
Those Boston years were good ones indeed. But life is unpredictable, and in spite of my deep attachment to New England, we now find ourselves building a life in the desert. We own a house and a car, have two cats and a garden, and at least three sets of dishes. Thanksgivings here have included days on our own, roasting a chicken and drinking a bottle of champagne, raking leaves and planting tulip bulbs. We have spent some years with friends around their bountiful tables. One year we went to San Francisco for the week. The only discernible pattern is the intention that these are special days, moments to treasure.
 This year was no different. I taught an easy week of make-up lessons, finishing the last one at 7pm on Tuesday. We went to Old Town for dinner, taking advantage of a new set of wheels in our driveway to get us there and back without incident. Wednesday morning I went to an early yoga class, stars still shining in the sky as I made my way along the darkened streets. We worked in the yard. I practiced, wrote, and read, enjoying the magical afternoon hours on the couch watching the subtle play of light shift across the walls. I made green chile potato soup, and after dark, walked up to the Nob Hill Flying Star to pick up dessert. Inside it was deserted, except for the festive table piled high with pies for take-away that was getting a brisk business.
We spent this Thanksgiving day with friends--Carolyn and Earl--and their extended chosen family. Carolyn and Earl, Max and Jean, and Martha and Jake met in Boston while in graduate school in the 1960's. Earl was working on a graduate degree in astrophysics at MIT, Jake was in economics at Harvard, and Max was at Harvard Divinity School. Between them, they raised 7 children in Boston, vacationed together, and built careers: Martha taught school in Belmont, Carolyn taught piano in Lexington and was music director at Lexington United Methodist church, Jean founded the piano pedagogy program at New England Conservatory. Over the years, they attended graduations, weddings, baptisms. Grandchildren were born. Carolyn and Earl moved to Albuquerque 18 years ago. Max and Jean bought a summer home in the Berkshires and moved to Princeton. This year all three couples celebrated their 50th wedding anniversaries. And for nearly 5 decades they have not missed a Thanksgiving together.
 The spring we determined that we were moving from Boston to Albuquerque, I wrote my friend and teacher Jean, with whom I had taken piano pedagogy at NEC. "My best friend lives in Albuquerque," she wrote back, "You need to find her. She will take care of you."
She has. As it turned out when we finally put two and two together, Carolyn had been on the search committee that hired Matt, and picked him up from the airport when he came for his interview. The world grows smaller all the time. Today she sings in Matt's choir at church, and has been to nearly every performance we have given here. Every three years, the infamous Thanksgiving gathering is in New Mexico, which means every third year we are privileged to sit in on the day.
After nearly 50 years of this, there are a few rituals. The group, which includes the three original couples, children and grandchildren, and honored witnesses like ourselves, gather in the living room for what has been christened "Circle Time." Each person takes a turn and summarizes their year, shares joys and sorrows, and breaks big news. Everyone has their moment, from the oldest person to the youngest. This year we heard about the grandchildren's soccer games, and the elders' health problems and struggles with learning to retire. Matt announced that he was having a mid-life crisis ; I talked about going back to school and the challenges of becoming simultaneously rooted and attached to a place, and trying to stay stimulated and challenged at the same time. This year, Cynthia spoke last. Cynthia is Carolyn and Earl's daughter and has the distinct position of being the oldest of the "kid" generation. "When I was younger," she began, "I used to hate Circle Time and thought I would die of hunger before it ended. But what I have realized as I sit here listening is that over the years I have had a glimpse of what looks like to be an adult at different stages of life. I heard about your careers, and how you coped with your elderly parents. I learned when you were first thinking about retirement, and now I see what it looks like to figure out how to grow old gracefully." Turning to the grandchildren she continued, "Maybe someday you'll remember that someone was having a mid-life crisis, or going back to school, or coping with health challenges and that these things were just a part of life. Circle Time is a microcosm of what it is to be a person, and what it means to make sense of your world as you go along."
As Cynthia spoke, I looked around at the founding members of Circle Time--the three men sitting together on the couch, the women scattered around the room gently guiding the discussion. In a world of broken relationships and missed connections, Circle Time is a powerful place to land every few years.
 "Home" will always be one of the most holy words I know. Although I will spend the rest of my life feeling in exile from New England, home---be it in our small jewel-boxed New Mexican cottage or our former tiny colorful apartment in Beacon Hill---is still my favorite place to be. Home, however, is more than a single place. It is also chosen family, mentors and teachers, sacred empty time, holidays and holy days . It's a rented farmhouse in New Hampshire. It's being snowed in a Boston apartment. It's driving home in the snow after a great film, and being with friends and family we treasure. Home is struggling to grow up and grow old, and learning how to build a world and life for yourself. In one form or another, home comes down to Circle Time, and the stories that make up our lives.
November 22nd, 2009 :: Extraordinary Days My brother Bob loves apples. I mean, seriously, he LOVES apples. Although I don't know his current apple consumption as an adult, I can tell you that when we were kids he could eat an entire bag of apples in one day. Our house was littered with apple cores--- tucked behind cushions, set on bookshelves and counters, tossed into the fireplace or thrown under the sofa. That is, when Bob didn't just eat the entire thing, core and all. I love apples too, although my daily consumption doesn't anywhere touch my brother's. More often than not, I eat an apple as I down my last gulp of coffee in the morning. Many days I get to lunchtime realizing that's all I have remembered to eat. A lack of apples in the house motivates me to go to the store immediately. Only the absence of cream in the refrigerator or coffee in the pantry provokes a similar sense of urgency. Last night after choir rehearsal Matt called. He said he was stopping at the store, did I need anything? Cream, I replied, and apples. This morning I noticed he had bought Jonathans. My grandparents used to grow Jonathan apples on the farm, but I haven't eaten a Jonathan apple since they sold the farm some 20 years ago. However, a bowl of Jonathan apples may inspire a pie this weekend, just out of nostalgia for my grandmother and her delicious pies. Mine is a variation on the apple pie theme, introduced to me by my friend, Lora. This one uses a store-bought crust (something my grandma would never do, but then I haven't yet achieved her domestic goddess status), and frozen cranberries, giving the dessert a tartness that cries out for a good ice cream. I could say that I need to practice making my pie in preparation for the rounds of Thanksgiving courses we will be attending next Thursday, but that would be a lie. Although we will need lots of pies in hand as we progress from course to course, I don't need practice on this one. I could make this pie in my sleep.  But making pies is a small step towards entering the Thanksgiving season, something I desperately need to do. Honestly, it has been a tough couple of months, which have climaxed recently in an especially trying couple of weeks. Last weekend, in fact, could be renamed The Weekend to Try a Woman's Soul, and the entire few months should be called The Season of Our Discontent. There are a dozens of reasons for this, both personal and professional, but I am tired of whining about it. Truth is, it's past time to stop and count our blessings, of which we have hundreds.  Just for starters, we should stop and remember the dozens of friends and neighbors who have literally carried us through the past few weeks, when our 20-year old car finally shuddered to a complete stop. There was our neighbor Jay who dropped what he was doing and came and jumped the car, allowing me to drive it the final few yards home. There was Dan, who with his three boys, arrived at our door late one Saturday night with a battery charger, in hopes of getting us through a couple more days. There were the various parents of my students who called with car leads, and offers of rides. There was Patti, who loaned us her car so I could get to my fall studio recital, and Lora, who in her own stalling, dying vehicle drove me to a concert I was playing so I didn't have to ride my bicycle.  That's only the beginning of the Thanksgiving litany, for in various ways both Matt and I have needed a lot of support this fall. Friends and mentors have been there with compassionate ears and shoulders to cry on. Students and colleagues have forgiven us when we have failed; friends and family have offered their hands when we fell down. When the roof leaked for the 500th time this season, we discovered to our dismay that our roofer had broken up with us, and wouldn't return our calls. But thanks to a quick referral from a friend, we soon had a new roofer and a patched roof. We still have work that we love most days; we have a colorful home that is ours; we have two funny, quirky cats. We have each other, and a marriage that I believe in. While there may always be limited funds in our bank account and an ancient car in our driveway, we have more than enough, and people who love us. And so, in one friend's words, it's time to start the festive season at the Greers'. Next Friday after the day-long progressive Thanksgiving dinner with various friends, we host our annual St. Cecelia party , our yearly toast to the patron of music. It's time to raise a glass, and be thankful.  For the harvests of the Spirit,
thanks be to God.
For the good we all inherit,
thanks be to God.
For the wonders that astound us,
for the truths that still confound us,
most of all that love has found us,
thanks be to God.
-Fred Pratt Green
June 7th, 2009 :: Extraordinary Days "I don't want a mistress. I don't want a sports car. All I want for my 40th birthday is a road trip by myself. And I want you at the end of it."
This was the announcement my husband gives me last summer, some months before his birthday. I have come to learn that I didn't respond to this wish exactly as Matt might have hoped. "Hmm..." I answered nonchalantly, and desperately changed the subject.
I hope it never is said that we don't support one another's hopes and dreams, and that we are each other's best advocate against the world, but I missed this one. Looking back, I think I hoped this plan would go the way of all good things. Or, at least, the way of most plans made after sharing a bottle of wine in the courtyard on a beautiful summer night. 
Ah, the ways we fail each other. Matt was deadly serious about every part of that statement. He didn't want a mistress; he didn't want a sports car; he wanted a road trip and he wanted me at the end of it. "Boston, maybe," he said. "Or New York. I want to walk into a hotel bar and find you there." And so over the last six months, Matt began making plans. He was granted a month's sabbatical at work. Road maps and travel books began littering the study. He booked a week long retreat at the Abbey of the Gethsemani in Kentucky. He reserved a rental car. Instead of me being at the end of the trip in a city we both love, I'd be at the beginning, for the trip would start in New York with my sister, Beth's, wedding. From there we'd take a bus to DC and visit Matt's sister, Mary. I'd fly home, Matt would pick up a car and start his adventure, which, by the end, even had a name: The Journey of Discovery. 
I didn't like the name at all. ("What do you need to discover?! I feel threatened.") I also didn't love the idea that I'd be flying home to an empty house, to be alone for two weeks. It's not that I don't like to be alone -- after nearly 15 years of marriage, solitude can be a welcome change of pace -- I just wasn't at all sure I wanted or needed two weeks of it. After all, too much time left alone to my own thoughts is simply too much time. And, the way my teaching schedule fell, I was going to be not working for much of the time, leaving me plenty of time to fully experience the solitude. "Why can't you do this when I am working around the clock and won't notice you're gone? Or, even better, why don't you do your discovering on day trips, with Albuquerque as your home base?"
But in the end, Matt got his road trip, which he renamed A Journey of Non-Discovery with a Happy Reunion at the End. He is somewhere in Tennessee as I write this, perhaps taking in the sights at Graceland. Meanwhile, my friend Lora, usually a reliable source of both company and entertainment, is on her own journey: a six-day backpacking trip in Yosemite. She spontaneously signed up for this trip after a bad breakup last winter, and has regretted it ever since. On our hikes together, I am always the one saddled with the coffee and croissants and jam, with the flora and fauna guides, not to mention the water. (Just call me "Sherpa.") The fact that Lora would have to carry some 40 pounds on her back during multi-day hike made her panic. She began training by carrying hand weights in a backpack on our early morning strolls through the neighborhood. I fully anticipated her to cancel and consider the $500 non-refundable deposit a generous donation to the Sierra Club, but Thursday morning, with my husband lost somewhere in the deep south, I drove Lora to the airport so she could fly to California. On the way she announced, "You know, this is the first time I have left the house without make-up since I was 16." "Hmm," I responded. "I can't remember the last time I wore make-up." "I know. And it's just wrong." Lora said. "God invented make-up, and we should wear it."
The night before, when we were searching for supper in my refrigerator, she said, "I need a name for my trip. Matt has a name for his trip." "How about The Trek of Stupidity?" I responded. "I was thinking The Hike of Doom," She shot back. "The Trek of Stupidity. The Hike of Doom. For an adventure of your magnitude surely you need a double name," I suggested. 
As it happened, I have ended up with a few discoveries of my own, most of which seem to be things I have learned before, but have failed to retain. The first is that, while I may not be teaching, I will always be busy. This never ceases to surprise me, that I manage to overfill even my vacation time. This time around I have been gardening for hours a day, reading at least eight books, practicing for a couple of upcoming recitals. I have had dinners with friends, taken extra yoga classes, done some much-needed planning. It hasn't been hard to roll out of bed at first light with the cats, and to hardly feel like I have had time to catch my breath for the next 14 hours. None of this should be a surprise. It certainly isn't to Matt, hearing about my days on our nightly phone calls. But for some mysterious reason, I always think time off will literally be "free time." It isn't; it's just filled differently. 
The second great lesson gets its own title. For some time now I have been interested in exploring meditation, perhaps in a Buddhist setting or community. I have tried meditating from time to time on my own, but have never been able to settle down with it at home. Quite simply, I am too distracted by the many competing forces on my time and attention within the walls of my own house. Maybe, I thought, if I found a committed meditation "sit" I would do better. So, last night I accompanied my friend Patti to the neighborhood community for a 40-minute "sit." "We can go later if you think that might be too long," she had offered earlier in the week. "No," I answered. "I want to try the whole thing." Later I regretted this almost as much as Lora regretted her impulsive decision to spend six nights in a tent. In fact, in the days before, I seriously panicked. "Well," said my friend Anne, "you better hope you are meditating for that length of time, because if you aren't you might just be going crazy." I needed a title for my meditation evening, I thought. Something that would appropriately express both my hopes and my fears. The Journey Within, With the Possibility of Crawling Out of My Own Skin seemed about right.
Miraculously, I was fine. Good, even. Now, I was plenty pleased when the 40 minutes were over, but I was not crawling out of my skin. I wasn't even itching. This proved what I had suspected, that this would be both a highly spiritual and grounding practice for me to do, and that my big lesson is to figure out how to manage it at least some of the time in my own living room, even with a thousand of pulls on my attention. I get that this might be the point, that I need to learn to center myself especially when the forces of life yank at me from many directions.
There seems to be one other lesson this month. This one isn't really a surprise either, although it's not a bad one to be reminded of every once in a while: I miss my husband. While the house is more orderly without Matt spreading out his stuff from one end to the other, it isn't home without him. My life might be less messy without him around, but it much less colorful. He makes me laugh. Without him, I lose sight of the ground. Busy as I might be in my own work and thoughts, there is some point every day when Matt makes me stop working. Without him I forget to eat, and lose track of the time. I didn't need to learn that I need the rock that Matt is in my life; I've known that for the last 17 years. He may be lost in Tennessee somewhere, but I'm lost at home without him.
It's the Happy Reunion I'm yearning for these days. I'll be at the end, my darling, waiting.
April 19th, 2009 :: Extraordinary Days St. Patrick's Day Scarfing.....  Easter sunrise morning scarfing (albeit sans scarf) occurred at 6AM (something about the sunrise part makes the whole crime very Biblical we think). The question has arisen: what kind of bird is it? A raven? A crane? A falcon? Could it be the elusive Maltese Falcon with special magical powers?  If you "scarf" a bird, do you "duck" a pond?  During this scarfing, we discovered that underneath the St. Patrick's Day twirly headband someone had left a note:
I Love You!
Clearly, this is a message from the bird. We are reading this as encouragement to keep up our seasonal costume changes. Cinco de Mayo here we come! 
January 7th, 2009 :: Extraordinary Days It's been a lovely holiday.
 Truth is, holidays can go either way. No matter how much I might profess to love the season between Halloween and Christmas, it doesn't mean that it isn't without its complications. Those two months are always too busy, there is way too much sugar tempting us at every turn, I work too much, play too much, sleep and exercise too little. On top of that, every year the Christmas season reminds me of how too much of a good thing is simply too much. I always end up feeling buried alive by the sheer amount of gifts coming into the door, holiday decor cluttering the house, and cookies filling my kitchen. No matter how much I may enjoy all of those things, a little goes a long ways. I can't remember a post-Christmas week where I haven't resorted to blindly throwing away wrapping paper, ribbons, boxes, food items, cards, and more in the hopes of digging us out. No wonder that in January I inevitably find myself supporting the simplicity movement.
And then there is the issue of holiday travel. We've lived a long distance from our families for many years now -- long enough that there are no expectations about whether or not we will come home for the holidays. This is a good thing, and allows us freedom to make our own plans. Some years we head back to Missouri and spend the week on I-70 so we can do Christmas with both Matt's Kansas City siblings, and my St. Louis family. Stressful as it can be, it is always good to be home, see family, catch up with friends, visit old haunts, and have some time away.
But this year, we stayed in New Mexico for the holidays. As it turns out, this has been a lovely place to keep Christmas.
 After finishing my last lessons for the semester, I crammed in last-minute Christmas shopping, wrote our holiday letter, started wrapping gifts, finished my studio newsletter. The Saturday night before Christmas we were invited to Jerome and Neal's for a "Dutch dinner." Jerome is not only a flutist, but also a superb cook. He has been casually mentioning his Dutch dinner ever since I met him. When pressed, he would say it was a winter meal, and then change the subject. Several weeks ago, I was at the house to see his Christmas tree, and Jerome said that he had some Dutch dinner leftovers in the refrigerator, did I want to try a bite? Never one to turn down food of any sorts, in short order Jerome placed in front of me a bowl of steaming hot mashed potatoes with slices of ham in it. I almost swooned. "It's not much," Jerome kept saying, "just ham cooked in butter with mashed potatoes." Oh. Oh. Oh. I kept repeating over and over again. Oh....
I must have convinced him that this was a special meal indeed, for although Jerome seemed almost apologetic to serve us such a "simple dinner," upon hearing that Matt's sister Mary was to be in town for the holidays, he invited us up for Dutch food. Mary, for her part, was sceptical at best. After all, she had lived in Holland and had nothing good to say about the food. But she was eager to meet Jerome and Neal, and so willingly arranged her plans to be here Saturday night in time for dinner.
Served up to all its glory, the "simple dinner" went something like this: Jerome scooped a mound of buttery mashed potatoes in the middle of each plate. On the potatoes he laid three strips of rolled ham, which I had seen simmering in about 6 inches of butter on the stove. In between each slice of ham, he gently set spears of white asparagus, and then topped the whole artery-clogging pile with a sliced boiled egg. This dinner could give you a heart attack, if you didn't die first of happiness. Matt took one bite and was transported to his happy place. Mary was completely won over to Dutch cuisine. I was convinced this was comfort food of the highest order. Jerome wouldn't stop apologizing for the simplicity of it all.
Having lived through the cholesterol-soaring dinner of the previous evening, the next day were Matt's Lessons and Carols services. As a church musician, this is both one of the highlights of his year and the cause of the most stress and anxiety. He was coasting a bit this year, it seemed to me. I remarked upon this, saying that he seemed less stressed this month than in the past. "What gives?" I asked him. "Is it that you've just done it now about a dozen times? Or that the choirs are in better shape this year? Why are you so calm?" "Probably it's all of those things," Matt said. "I"m just thinking that this is going to be a lot of fun. I get to conduct 115 singers and a 30-piece orchestra doing great music. What's not to love?"
Mary, on the other hand, woke up Sunday morning with two goals. She needed to get a new camera so she could take pictures during the service ("Strictly forbidden," Matt reminded her, but then remembered this was his big sister, who has attended every big event of his since his 2nd grade choir concert with a camera in hand.). In addition to the camera, Mary wanted a Christmas sweater to wear, as the one she had brought she had been wearing since the early 1980's. Apparently, before she left DC, a friend took Mary into her office, shut the door and gently told her that the sweater was no longer fit to be worn in public. I am one of those people who feel strongly that no one needs a Christmas sweater, but Mary was to be a reader during the 6:00 service and wanted one to wear. Faced with this information as I am drinking my first cup of coffee, my mind starts racing to see how I can get out of stepping into a store that might sell holiday attire. "Listen," I told her, "someone just gave me a Christmas sweater. Maybe you could wear it? And if you like it you could keep it."
It was true. Not two weeks before, our friend Carolyn had called to say she was dropping off a sweater that I could have or could pass along as I wanted, but that no one in her family could wear it and it needed a new home. Apparently she had given this sweater to her mother-in-law the previous Christmas, who happened to be my size. The mother-in-law was in her 90's and died last January, leaving an unworn Christmas sweater, which was now in my possession. Mary, I reasoned, could have the 90-year-old woman's sweater.
Amazingly, she agreed, which solved two problems at once: the immediate issue of the Christmas sweater needed that day, and the long-term problem of finding this sweater a loving home. So, with Mary attired in her new bright red Christmas sweater, we went to both services, which were indeed lovely. I persuaded Mary to only take photos while Matt wasn't looking, and to her credit, she kept the flash turned off. Afterwards, we went to dinner and began plotting the next event on the week's agenda.
In two days, Matt was turning 40. This, more than anything, was the reason for Mary's trip to New Mexico this year. Aided by plenty of other people, I had been scheming for months about how to celebrate Matt's big birthday appropriately. At one point, one friend had written on her calendar, "Top Secret Mission" to mark a possible surprise party date. This was just in case Matt ever saw her calendar. Certainly, "Top Secret Mission" would not arouse suspicions. But in the end, the party was not a surprise after all. Instead, between about the seventh and eighth party of the season at our house, I exhaustedly said, "Baby, I'll throw you a party. When do you want it?"
 Monday morning began with a hike, followed by breakfast and a huge grocery shopping trip. And then the fun began. I pointed in the direction of lights and luminaries, and Mary and our friend Katie went to work, while I baked a triple layer chocolate cake, cleaned house, iced champagne, gathered cards and letters into a basket, and so on. That night our home was filled with friends ready to toast the completion of my husband's fourth decade. The cake became my domestic goddess moment of the year. There were speeches given, toasts made, songs sung, many bottles of champagne drunk. Katie and her mother must have washed dozens of dishes and glasses, for when I made my way to the kitchen at one point in the evening, there were piles of neatly stacked plates washed and dried and ready to put away. At about 11:30pm, Anne and I made pasta carbonara for the late crowd, and the final bottle of champagne was opened at midnight. Matt's brother Mark phoned from England a few minutes later to be the first sibling calling to wish Matt a happy birthday. All in all, it was a wonderful night, a perfect final party of 2008.
 The next day--Matt's actual birthday--Mary, Matt and I went to Santa Fe. Mary had a friend who had offered her condo while she was away. "How is it that Mary has these friends with empty condos in Santa Fe, and we don't?" we asked one another. We spent the day wandering around the plaza, eating nachos in the St. Francis Hotel, having a late dinner at Cafe Pasqual's. The next morning I took a soul-feeding solitary walk down Canyon Road (My nomination for the happiest place on earth. Forget Disneyland -- I'll take Canyon Road any day.), and then we headed home so that Matt could get ready for Christmas Eve services. Matt went to church, Mary and I put out luminaries once again, keeping that delightful New Mexico tradition. Mary went off to church, I stayed home, unpacked, tried to put the house in order, and made a Christmas Eve dinner of roast beef with cranberries and two kinds of potatoes, which we ate between services. We all went to the 11 o'clock service, and then home for dessert and drinks at midnight.
 After a holiday like this one, crashing was inevitable, and crash we have. We thought we'd rent a car and go on an unplanned adventure, but the couch has had too much appeal. Having not slept past dawn for month, we've been sleeping late, easily getting 10 hours of sleep every night. We've been reading and watching movies, going on walks, and eating our way though the huge quantity of sugar that we have accumulated in the last month. I have been gardening, working through the late outdoor projects of gathering leaves for the compost pile and cutting back perennials. Slowly, now that 2009 has arrived, I am in the process of de-Christmasizing the house: taking a load of ribbons and bells, cranberry strands and candles every time I go downstairs. This always takes longer than I think it should; inevitably in mid-January I will still be finding miscellaneous Christmas items--CDs, books, angels--that I have overlooked. We are down to the last of the peanut brittle and chocolate. I have read through at least half of the pile of books on the coffee table.
 Here's the lesson of this holiday season: by bowing out of certain expectations, practicing the act of saying "no" a bit more often, and experimenting with not having every minute pre-planned and over-scheduled, we have found a bit of heaven the last two weeks. If there is anything I need to infuse into my breathless life this year, it is the practice of quietness, stillness, centering and breathing. Sitting in a courtyard behind a gallery on Canyon Road, listening to a fountain bubble behind me, it hits me, not for the first time, that what I need in 2009 is not more of anything, except for moments like this. Oh, I have no doubt that my high speed multi-tasking personality will still function at a frantic pace, but what would happen to my life--my physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological health--if there was more nothing, more space, more breathing room in my world?
 "I am replacing the desire to be good with the desire for authenticity," artist Tinka Tarvers said. "I am replacing the desire for perfection with the desire for wholeness." Yes, I whispered upon reading this, and something inside of me quietly, slowly exhales.
November 26th, 2008 :: Extraordinary Days Although I can hardly wrap my mind around it, Thanksgiving is upon us. Staring us in the face. Jumping in our laps, demanding us to Be thankful, damn it!
I love Thanksgiving. It is by far and away my favorite holiday. I like it because, aside from those awful paper turkeys you could tastelessly tape in your windows, Hallmark hasn't taken over this day. I like it because I have fond childhood memories of Thanksgiving on my grandparents' farm, with dinners of turkey and roast beef, a million sides of creamy vegetables from the garden, ending with cherry and apple pies with fruit from Grandpa's trees. Once my grandmother came to visit us, and Matt persuaded Grandma to teach him to make her piecrust. Grandma called it, "Bride's Simple Pie Crust." Matt didn't find it so simple, apparently, because he has never made it again.
I also love Thanksgiving because I love the food, and any excuse to gather a lot of people around a table to eat is a good one in my opinion. When we lived in Boston we used to have Thanksgiving at my cousin's farm in southeastern Massachusetts (a small farm bought, incidentally, out of my cousin's own nostalgic memories of my grandparents’ farm). Scott's farmhouse and Thanksgiving table were special indeed, always a merry assortment of cousins and friends, and food to die for.
But mostly I love Thanksgiving because it is blessed time off in what is otherwise a dauntingly busy time of year. Some years we travel, but my favorite Thanksgivings are by far the ones we stay home. This is one of those years. Some months ago, my friend Anne invited Matt and me to share Thanksgiving with her family: "Are you going anywhere this year? No? OK. You are having Thanksgiving with us." But about a month ago she stood in my kitchen and rescinded the invitation, saying that they had to go to Austin to visit Dan's brother or some other lame excuse. (In her defense, I must say that she did this with an extremely guilty look on her face, but still...) Fortunately, we have lots of good friends. We accepted an invitation with a family from church -- daughter Katie used to be in Matt's youth choir, but is now away at college. She and her parents are dear friends. We shudder to imagine that we are nearly old enough to be Katie parents, and like her folks we are eagerly awaiting her visit home. (She e-mailed me just this morning: "You seem really stressed out. Any errands I could run for you of the non-musical sort?" What a great kid. We'd happily be her parents.) Jerome, my flute-playing buddy and frequent collaborator, also sent an invitation our way, saying that we "probably had never had Thanksgiving with real live Indians." That is true, and would, no doubt, be a story to tell. Maybe next year.
This year in particular I am thankful not to cook or do dishes on Thanksgiving. I say this after a weekend in which I did little but load and unload the dishwasher. Jerome says that the "festive season at the Greers’ has begun" and indeed that does seem to be the case. Several weeks ago, Jerome and I played a recital together, after which we had a champagne reception at our house. "If I bring a case of champagne and all the food, can we have the party at your house?" Jerome had asked me. Of course. Then, last weekend, we had visiting our dear friends Ken and Beverly.
 Ken Medema is a pianist and composer who happens to be blind. I say the last part almost as an aside, because his blindness is not the most remarkable thing about him. Matt laughs that Ken is the only man who is allowed to walk up, hug his wife and say, “Hello, gorgeous!” I point out that the man is blind, so one must to take that into consideration when assessing his judgment. “Oh, but Ken knows,” Matt assures me.
 Ken was in town to sing and lead worship at church, and to do a concert on Matt’s series. He sings and plays the piano, but his biggest schtick is that he invites audience members to tell stories, and then improvises a song to illustrate the story --music and lyrics. The music itself is of such originality that it would be impressive alone, but the lyrics---they are poetic and profound, and even rhyme. It is a stunning thing to see. But that gift should be balanced with the fact Ken “can’t drive very well,” as one of my little students astutely noted, causing us to laugh. “Yeah, you’re good, Ken, but you can’t drive,” we reminded him all weekend.
 A visit from Ken and his wonderful assistant Beverly, whom we also adore, is reason to pop open more champagne, for sure. So one night, we had a small group of friends at the house to meet Ken and Bev. Matt made Algonquin Punch, which was potent indeed, and many of our closest friends gathered to talk and drink and nibble cheese. As always, at the end of the evening, Ken graced us with music, playing his arrangement of "All The Things You Are," which also wove in "Fly Me To the Moon," and somehow, incredibly, a four-voice fugue on the first phrase of the original tune. Improvising fugues is one of Ken's trademarks. "Oh yeah," I said sarcastically to him, "anyone can do that." Then he made up a song about the evening -- incorporating the punch and the cookies, the jokes and the stories, the idea that this was a moment in time that we would always treasure. Everyone in the room was in tears when he finished, sealing his point completely.
The next morning Ken taught my performance classes. This was a morning I had been enthusiastically selling to my students for months. The kids were prepped and ready, "Wow. He is the opposite of Beethoven" at least four of them told me. One little girl, remembering our class last spring with pedagogical composer Dennis Alexander, said, "Cool. Just like Mr. Alexander. Only blind!"
 Not surprisingly, Ken was brilliant with the kids. A handful performed for him and he made musical suggestions. I had a couple of students who compose play for him and he helped with their compositions. One high school kid who has a Friday night gig at a country club played the arrangement that he had worked out by ear of the theme from Titanic, after which Ken proceeded to sit down and play it about a dozen different ways, demonstrating how the song could be varied. Greg stood behind him with a grin from ear to ear, just shaking his head. When Ken finished I asked, "So, what do you think?" to which Greg answered, "I think this was amazing."
   Parents stayed for the classes and raved about it, one father remarking, "It is so good for the kids to just see what might be off the charts like this." I agree. This was not necessarily a class to inspire them in any concrete way, for Ken's ability is so extraordinary that it isn't something any of us can really aspire to. But I wanted the kids to rub elbows with this kind of talent for a little while, for you never know what might stick.
 Ken, Bev and Matt went off to do choir rehearsals in the afternoon in preparation for Sunday's events. I loaded the dishwasher with another load of wine glasses, vacuumed, put in a pot roast. Saturday night we had two of our favorite couples—Brad and Karen, Anne and Dan--over for dinner with Ken and Bev. Sunday was full of church and the concert, and then dinner in Old Town complete with a pitcher of margaritas.
Ken has recently re-recorded a song he wrote 30 years ago for the Bicentennial, called “I See America.” There is an underground campaign to get it to Obama in time for the Inauguration, for it reflects the hope and dreams that seem tangible these days after the election. It’s been my soundtrack for the last two days, its text scrolling through my brain this Thanksgiving week…..
Well I’ve seen the white sand beaches near the town where I was born….. and I’ve breathed the mountain air so fresh and green. But I’ve been in other places where it’s hard to breathe the air, and the high-rise nightmare blocks the morning sun. And once played in the dirty streets and no one seems to care. America’s children, look what we have done.
I see America through the eyes of love, and I long for all the children to be free. And if you see, put your hand to the job, there is work that must be done till freedom’s song is sung from sea to sea…*
This work week is short, thankfully: two days of teaching, an extra choir rehearsal to play, and then tomorrow Lora and I are hitting the mountains at our second attempt at taking La Luz, said to be the toughest hike in the state. Today is a grey November day; you can taste winter in the air. Writing this with a cup of coffee at my elbow, I am acutely aware that there are a lot of reasons to be thankful this year. We have families that love us, wonderful friends who fill our lives and our home with their laughter and music. In spite of daily warnings about the state of the world, I am more optimistic than I was four and eight years ago. We have work we love, and are privileged enough to get to spend our lives doing tangible things that make a difference, nudging the world in a small way towards futures we believe passionately in. Friday night is our annual St. Cecelia party, another marker in the festive season. It’s time to raise a glass to fact that for another year, we got away with making a living making music.
…Well I’ve seen the untold millions whose birthplace freedom made, who nourished by her dreams grew strong and tall. And I’ve seen them teach their children so that the dream would never fade. And I’ve seen them stand to answer freedom’s call. But I’ve seen how greed and carelessness can wipe that dream away, create a living nightmare in its stead. Well, rise up children, dream again, for its time for us to say, though some may scoff, the dreamers are not dead….*
 But this weekend there will also be time for the stack of books I've been collecting by my bed, maybe a movie or two, some time alone with just the two of us and the two felines with which we share our home. I'll raise a glass to that.
…I see America through the eyes of love, and I long for all her children to be free. And if you see, put your hand to the job, there is work that must be done, till freedom’s song is sung-- and freedom’s bell is rung--from sea to shining sea.*
*I See America music and lyrics by Ken Medema
August 22nd, 2008 :: Extraordinary Days Recently I was standing in my kitchen studying a recipe for pizza dough when lightning struck the 70-foot elm tree outside our front courtyard. 
I had been meaning to tackle pizzas for months--going so far as to even write on my summer wish list "learn to make tarts and pizzas". But it has been an unusual summer. I'm sure this is a character flaw of some kind, but I tend to develop one great friend from each area or era of my life going all the way back to high school:
There's Lisa, my "twiend," separated-at-birth, best friend from high school. When we were sixteen, we looked so much alike that people could confuse us. I look back on blurry photos taken from those years and can't tell who is who. Even now, 20 years later, we look more alike than not, passing easily as sisters if not twins.
Julianne remains my closest friend from my three semesters at Trinity University. She lives outside Dallas and still manages to call several times a month, even while working full-time and raising three kids.
Missy is my best friend from Mizzou. We studied with the same teacher, and both practiced too much. We should have been having more fun; we know that now. She teaches piano and raises three kids in Springfield, Mo. For my 30th birthday, Matt surprised me by flying Missy to Boston to visit. She arrived the day we moved into the smallest apartment imaginable on Beacon Hill. I will always owe her for the days she spent scrubbing and cleaning and unpacking with me in a horrible heat wave.
Julia is a soul-mate that I discovered within weeks of moving to Albuquerque. She had grown up here and was back for a year of intensive study in flamenco dancing. We became fast friends and met weekly for coffee. She left the next summer, but I was in her wedding two years later. This summer she has been living in Santa Fe, while her husband coaches at SF Opera.
Lora is my best friend from Boston, now living around the corner, much to my constant surprise and amazement. She is now my weekly hiking partner, and my permanent cat and plant sitter. She is always up for a drink, an emergency shopping trip, or a day in Santa Fe.
Anne is my newest dear friend. She's a terrific pianist and a favorite musical partner. She teaches piano, and raises three brilliant boys--the oldest, Simon, is in my studio. She and I suffer from the same trait of always juggling ten things at once. Just yesterday, we had an hour to do a rehearsal of a four-hand piece we are performing in a couple of weeks, and it took 50 of those minutes to simply get up to date on one another's life. That left 10 minutes for practicing, which is not setting a good example for our students. Never have the stars aligned so that I had multiple best friends in the same place at the same time. But this summer, it happened. Lora had moved here; Julia was living nearby; Anne was five minutes away. Thinking tarts sounded easier than pizza, I started there and in June hosted a dinner. "Come to Girls' Night with Tarts" (I mean that EXACTLY like it sounds. Tarts, as in the pastry thing.) I invited Julia, Lora, and Anne. "You making tarts. Now THAT is something I can get behind," Anne responded enthusiastically. The tarts were pretty decent. I made a savory mushroom tart with a corn meal crust. A tomato, mozzarella, basil tart and a fruit tart for dessert. We drank Campari with soda in the garden, opened a bottle of wine with dinner, sauteed green beans in butter, nibbled on cheese and olives. It was a good night. If only life wasn't so busy. I thought the summer would be full of such evenings. But alas! My regular life of teaching and performing got in the way. Lora, Julia and I went to see "Sex and the City" one afternoon. There was the "ladies hike" with Anne and Lora, and a day puttering around Santa Fe with Julia. Various spontaneous drinks, dinners and walks in the neighborhood with Lora. I have hardly seen Anne, except for quick drop-offs for Simon's piano lessons. But back to the "learn to make tarts AND pizzas" goal, which I was determined to see through. Tarts weren't exactly easy, I discovered. Would pizzas be harder? After all, there was yeast involved in pizza crusts, something I generally try to avoid. But here I was standing in the kitchen trying to figure out the pizza crust recipe when the loudest thunder I have ever heard exploded around me. I wasn't immediately aware of what just happened. I glanced out the window to see dozens of birds taking flight. The air looked, well, struck, for lack of a better word. The cats streaked by me in panic. At that moment, I realized with alarm, my beloved husband was sitting in a bathtub full of water, perhaps having just been electrocuted. I called out, "Matt. MATT!" "Yeah," he answered casually, "that was loud." On closer inspection, it wasn't just loud. The lightning had struck our huge old tree down the middle. It had also (pierced? burned? what would be the correct verb here?) a hole right through the strawbale wall in our front courtyard. Smoke was pouring out of the hole in the wall; limbs, leaves and bits of wood were everywhere. Neighbors whom I had never met began spilling out of their houses to examine the damage. Cars slowed down, one man claiming he had seen it from down the street. A guy living across the street came to gawk. I have seen him around, said hello to him when we passed on the sidewalk. But as we were standing there staring at the wreckage, I realized that I had either been struck by lightning myself and was seeing double, or this young man has an identical twin standing next to him. I have been greeting one or the other of them for years now, not realizing there were two of them. It was a surreal moment.   They say that lightning only strikes once, and probably never again will I have so many good friends living nearby. But given this fact, I wasn't about to let this year's birthday celebration go ignored. After the last performance of the summer, we invited a group of friends over for ice cream cake and champagne, new friends and old rubbing shoulders for a few hours. At the last minute, our dear friends from Texas, Mary and Glenn, came, which was more icing on the cake than any birthday girl deserves. Anne and Dan, the die-hards who are always ready to finish the last bottle of champagne after every party, stayed late enough to eat eggs with us at 1am, . The evening was one of those strange slices of life, friends gathered from different periods. It happens at weddings, when most of us can't appreciate it (In our case, Matt and I were too young to have collected the treasures of friends we have now). Lora said later that she could only imagine such a gathering of her friends at her funeral. What a gift to be around to enjoy it. Lightning only strikes once. And that pizza? Amazing.
July 27th, 2008 :: Extraordinary Days One Saturday morning last month at the bright hour of 5:30am, my friends, Anne and Lora, and I gathered in my sunroom to mark the beginning of the first ever Ladies Hike. Living near the mountains and genuine wilderness areas has whetted my appetite for hiking, something I had previously abandoned after a childhood spent dragging baloney sandwiches and tepid water up Colorado mountains with my family. Matt and I win no records for our hiking attempts, but we manage to get out to the Sandias every few months for an hour or two. We are pretty pathetic though, as can be seen in our inability to actually stay on a trail. We don't intend to rough it, we just find ourselves wandering through the brush and running into cacti, having lost the path completely. I thought it would be good to go hiking with someone who knows the trails and the mountains, and could therefore introduce me to places I would never manage to locate on my own. I had been talking about getting a group of women together to go hiking, and one evening at a dinner party mentioned it to our friend Kent, who is a serious hiker. "Would you consider taking a group of ladies on a hike sometime?" I asked him. "Sure," he replied and so plans began and a date was set. I was certain I could collect a fun group of women, but when the day was finally decided and the start time of 6am determined, I was amazed at how many formally enthusiastic ladies were suddenly "very busy" at 6am. (And 6am was a compromise. Kent thinks all summer hikes should begin at dawn, avoiding heat and sun issues.) So in the end, it was only three decidedly girly women who embarked upon the Ladies Hike. Anne's first words that morning were, "Is the coffee on?" which I think says much about our lack of familiarity with that time of day. I was barely managing to get my shoes on; nothing as complicated as making coffee was happening. So caffeine-deprived and blurry-eyed, we drove to the trailhead to meet our fearless leader. Our first indication that this was not going to be quite the "stroll through nature" that we had imagined (picture ladies carrying parasols) was Kent getting out of his off-road vehicle a pair of what can only be described as serious hiking poles with grip-like things. Eyeing these suspiciously, I asked for clarification, "You said, 30 minutes in and 30 minutes out, right?" reminding him of our conversation earlier that week. After all, Anne was concerned about having enough time for pancakes, and Lora thought that if the hike time equalled the breakfast time to follow we were on the right track.
"Well," Kent admitted, "30 minutes would be really pushing it, but we should be able to get up there in 50 minutes." Keep that in mind, he said 50 MINUTES. From there he took off on what can only be called a sprint through the foothills, the three of us panting to keep up with him. At one point, he turns around and graciously says, "Amy, why don't you lead so you can set the pace?" At which time he must have thought we had slowed down to a crawl, but Lora and Anne later assured me that I was still moving plenty fast enough. After about 45 minutes of this sprint, we reached the first of the many rock-climbing passages in the canyon:  ....which looks more innocent than it really was. In truth, it constituted 4th and 5th class moves. (See "Terminology" footnote for definitions of all technical hiking-related terms.) Lora began swearing in her charming colorful vocabulary, all of us abandoned any hope of pancakes in the next century. If we made it out alive we'd be doing good, we thought, as we started making bargains with the devil. At this point, we have been hiking for 50 minutes. (See above: "50 minutes should do it.")  For the next two hours, the madness continued as three girly women tried to "scramble," "chimney," and "parallel bar" over rocks and up cliffs in an attempt to keep up with Kent. By this time I am convinced, this man is not a human being after all, but a mountain goat. "At what point this week," I said to him huffing and puffing, "did you think that this would be the ideal 'ladies' hike?" He smiled, motivated by the thought that he would never have to drag women up a mountain again. Where were we headed anyway? To this point.....  Which looks like nothing, but constituted a 1300 foot gain in 1.75 miles, which is roughly one foot in elevation for every 2 feet forward. In other words, nothing to be scoffed at. Kent called this the "Forbidden City" hike, which impressed me, until I realized that he made up the name. In fact, he made up the whole damn hike. Nowhere in one of those lovely guides to hiking in the Sandias were you going to find this hike. Nor would you be able to replicate it on your own. For although I had visions of learning new beautiful trails via Kent and his years of expertise, it has, in fact, been years since he actually has done a real trail as would be published in a Sandia Hiking Guide.  Two+ hours later, we made it to the top. During the last scramble across the rocks, Lora dropped her prescription sunglasses, leading her to express herself in more colorful language, and Kent, our intrepid leader, to chimney down in the crevices to rescue them. We three ladies were sunning ourselves on the pinnacle, taking in the view:  ....when Lora turned around, now wearing the prescription sunglasses that Kent has retrieved, and said, "There's a snake." Immediately behind us, not 6 inches away from Anne's butt, was a rattlesnake. (From this point forward referred to as a "rattler.") Kent: "Move!"  At this point, I would love to show you a picture of the rattler, but I didn't stop long enough to take one. You'll have to do with the "I survived a rattler" (not to mention Kent's "Ladies Hike") photo:  From this moment on, having braved hanging out on a rock in the sun with a rattler, nothing could faze us. We happily traversed down the mountain chatting merrily of kitchen renovations and what food might be eaten in such a kitchen, and what food had been eaten in other kitchens in the last month, as well as what was planned to be eaten at breakfast that day and in the next month, all to Kent's amusement. We made no record speed, mind you, but considering the climb up, this "walk back" to the car flew by, allowing us to get back to the parking lot in a record slow finish time of 3 and a half hours. Yes, that would be 3 and a half hours. (See "30 minutes in, 30 minutes out"). So with the first ever ladies hike behind us, we are ready to plan the next one (sans rattlers). Who's in?  Later, over pancakes and scramblers (not to be confused with rattlers), we agreed that it had been an amazing morning (how quickly you forget the pain. Is this like childbirth?). Even though Anne and Lora admitted, "Amy, we thought we were going to die," given enough recovery time, we just might do it again. After all, being the opposite of Outward Bound types, none of us had ever had an experience like this before. The next day talking over the hike with Kent's wife Jacque, she sympathized, "Amy, I thought you knew what you were getting into." Uh, no. (See the "30 minutes in, 30 minutes out" or "50 minutes should do it" quotes as to my state of mind and mental--not to mention physical--preparation.)
I spent the rest of the day on the couch. Jacque said Kent was worn out too. Apparently he reported to her that it was tough to go at that "slow pace." Whatever. "Amy, we thought we were going to die," is a better, more accurate description of this experience.
 *For those brave enough to join the next Ladies Hike, here's some technical hiking terminology you should know: PUTTING UP A ROUTE: This means that you are not actually following an actual trail from the Sandia Hiking Guide. Instead, you are forging your own path through the wilderness. (Think "Road Less Traveled"). While Kent acted like he knew where he was going, in all likelihood we were actually "putting up a route." WATER-POLISHED ROCKS: rocks so smooth that we will certainly slide right off of them onto our butts. SCRAMBLING, CHIMNEYING, PARALLEL BARRING: These terms pertain to the actual climbing of rock cliffs. Lora, in particular, was quite gifted at chimneying, which involves going up on your butt. Several times, Kent recommended that Anne "parallel bar" between two big rocks, which given her long legs was the best option. My technique involved a lot of falling back on yoga-trained flexibility and putting myself in the zen place of "maybe if I imagine I am not doing this, it will go away." 3RD, 4TH, AND 5TH CLASS MOVES: Also, rock climbing terms, 5th class being the most difficult moves. Make no mistake about it, we did 5th class moves. TRAVERSE: This is what you do to come back down the mountain post rattler. FORBIDDEN CITY, TOILET BOWL CANYON, HAPPY FACE CANYON, LITTLE MAN TRAIL: These are all made-up names and routes forged by Kent and his buddies. None of these constitute a "ladies" hike. PINNACLE: highest point in the rock climb, where rattlers hide out. (A million thanks to Kent for braving the first ever ladies hike and for putting up with our tortoise-like pace, not to mention Lora's language. And for finding Lora's sunglasses, which contributed to Lora sighting the rattler. We're ready to take on your hikes again. Next time we'll make t-shirts to mark the achievement.)
June 7th, 2008 :: Extraordinary Days We have had the windiest spring ever. Day after day, the gusts knock us senseless, rendering gardening and bicycling impossible. The season itself seems confused, the normal schedule of blooms following no particular pattern this year. Some flowers were super early, others very late. The forsythia bloomed before Valentine's Day, but the poppies (usually a spring break fiesta) only started appearing recently. This has been both wonderful and disconcerting at the same time. On one hand, having the season unfold in slow motion has allowed me to really enjoy every stage. On the other hand, I find myself wondering what is going on, missing the predictable arrival of poppies in March, tulips in April, roses in May. One week the temperature shot up giving us days of 80 degrees, then unexpectedly the temperature plummeted and the next morning we woke up to snow on the mountains. The next week the same thing happened: we had record high in the mid-90's; but then it rained and overnight the mountain peaks had a new fresh layer of white. Unbelievable.  Maybe every year is unpredictable and I just haven't noticed before. Or maybe it is just another sign of the rootedness I am beginning to feel here, that I might think I know how a season should unfold in this landscape. I am having an unexpected love affair with New Mexico at the moment, brought on, I imagine, by seeing this state through a newcomer's eyes. With my friend Lora moving around the corner, I find myself introducing to her (and to myself with delicious freshness) the wonders of living here. She calls with questions about hardware stores and restaurants, dry-cleaners and nurseries, and I discover in answering her that I know this city well--my affection for neighborhoods and businesses and people coming through. This summer we pass the five-year anniversary of living here--a monumental landmark for us. Already I see the difference: in various ways I have loved every place we lived, but moving every few years meant that most of my energy was spent on the act of creation: creating a life, creating a reputation, building a studio, establishing rewarding playing gigs. While a certain amount of recreating and tweaking will always be necessary, my efforts these days are different. For the first time, I have the pleasure of teaching students for the long haul--seeing their progress over many years and watching them develop into fine young musicians, versus starting a group of enthusiastic youngsters and then handing them to another teacher just when they might take off . I now have musical partners with whom I have played multiple concerts and recitals, our collaborations reaching new depths and comfort. At home, I am beginning to sense the danger of not moving, for it forces me to clean out every drawer and closet. Already the basement is turning into a default "Oh, just put that downstairs," black hole. Yet at the same time, the house and garden are assuming a gentle grace of living that reflects our lives: the Adirondack chairs in the backyard becoming part of our summer evening landscapes, the canisters of dried beans, nuts and fruits living on the kitchen windowsill, the herbs in the courtyard an easy step away when cooking.  Even events have found a certain ease and routine: the night Matt takes his youth choir to the Santa Fe Opera every summer, the dinner we hold for the high school seniors in the choir every fall, the twice-yearly studio recitals, the annual get-away to Taos in October, the big St. Cecelia party the Friday night before Thanksgiving. Since when were these things we "always" did, I wonder? And yet here we are, expecting these occasions every year. I look forward to the beginning of the downtown farmers market every June, wait with anticipation for the first whiff of roasting green chile every August, count the days until we can do our trip to Santa Fe to take in the holiday decor every December. As I write this, I am back to teaching, my between-semesters break before the summer session behind me. It seems I have "always" had this break, although really this is a custom of the past few years, born out of necessity due to travel schedules. But my families now expect this break, and this year especially I am happy to oblige. We all needed a rest before buckling down to the business of summer lessons and schedules. For my part, I needed time to get a few pleasurable summer pursuits in place. The last two weeks I dipped into a pile of guilt-free, no-work reading for the first time. I put on five coats of bright weatherproof yellow paint on an outdoor table and giddily spray-painted five folding-chairs loud happy colors. I put in the last of the season's plants and got a basil plant going outside my sun-room door. I re-potted the kitchen cacti and set outside for the summer. I planted a gorgeous yellow climbing rose ("Golden Showers") outside the French doors into my courtyard, and dug up some baby agave cacti pups that had sprouted up around their mothers. These I potted in big ceramic pots to set in the courtyard, hoping to convince them to fill out their new homes.
   As always after a long semester, the first thing my body did was rebel and sleep. Ten-hour nights weren't long enough, I still found myself dozing on the couch in the afternoon, my system crashing after months of being "on." Suddenly, my highly efficient routines went out the window; it took me all day to practice a few hours. My e-mails went unanswered; I forgot to return phone calls. One weekend I hardly dressed, puttering around the house all day in my pajamas. Wearing sunglasses and sloppy gardening clothes, I went to Frontier to buy tortillas incognito, hiding behind my grubbiness, my blissfulness at not having to obey regular rituals of bathing or doing my hair.
November 12th, 2007 :: Extraordinary Days My husband is the youngest of five children. I am the oldest of five. Matt and I have been married for thirteen years. In that time, not one of our siblings has gotten married, all of them remaining single or in long-term, but unmarried, relationships. Last April, surprising us all, my brother David announced that he was getting married. He had met a girl on the internet and, after a few weekend visits, they had decided to get married. “I wandered into the wrong room and met the right man,” JoDee told us later, describing how the two of them had met on a free Yahoo chat room shortly after Thanksgiving last year. He is 31, she 28, and they each had been visiting chat rooms divided by age group: 20’s, 30’s and so on. “What are you doing here?” David asked when she identified herself: Single. Female. 28. “You are in the wrong room!” Typical David, both to reach out to someone who doesn’t belong and to be perfectly blunt in doing so. From that inauspicious opening, however, the relationship took off, the two of them chatting for hours every night. As characteristic of David’s private nature, he did not breathe a word of this budding relationship to the family until she came to visit one weekend in January. Even so, his casual announcement about their engagement caught us all off guard, “Hello Mom. Is Dad there? I need to talk to him about a wedding.” Needless to say, we all had reservations about this engagement. After all, it happened so quickly, miles apart from one another. Could they possibly know each other well enough to get married, we asked each other. Does David know what he is doing? He doesn’t have a long string of past relationships to compare with or learn from. Maybe this girl was equally inexperienced, and if so, were they rushing blindly into this? In spite of our reservations, a late September wedding date in St. Louis was set, and plans began forming. This would be a momentous occasion in another way. Due to crossed schedules and busy lives, the five kids in my family had not been home at the same time for years. Mom and Dad recently had put their home on the market and bought a new smaller condo in St. Louis. Returning home would not be “home” anymore. There was the question of where we would all sleep and how we would all get fed. Most importantly, in a family of musicians, who was going to be in charge of the music at the ceremony? We began arriving for the weekend on a Wednesday. My brother Bob, and my Aunt Jan arrived first. Immediately, Jan began baking cake and arranging flowers. Matt and I flew in Thursday night, meeting JoDee and greeting a new, prouder and more confident David. My sisters Beth and Sarah and their boyfriends arrived from New York on Friday. They checked into the hotel, Matt and I took over the guest room, and Bob slept on the couch downstairs in front of the big screen, high-definition television. We began discussing who would play what music at the wedding and ran errands to the drycleaners and the grocery store for more powered sugar and cream. Beth went to get a manicure and the guys left for haircuts. Cousins and their children began arriving into town. Dad went into serious introverted withdrawal. At 5pm on Friday night, with the catered rehearsal dinner for 40 people to be held at the condo just hours away, the plumbing backed up. “Roots,” the plumber announced when called, “And I can’t do anything about it until at least tomorrow.” Frantically, we changed clothes and headed off to the church, leaving aunts and uncles in charge of the catering and the dicey plumbing. At the rehearsal, we met JoDee’s family who had arrived from Indiana, and settled the music details. Dad, who was performing the ceremony, went into work-mode, giving him a welcomed distraction from the emotional toll of the weekend. After the rehearsal, we returned to the condo, now full of out-of-towns guests and relatives and a table full of barbeque. Quickly, the five kids and our partners filled plates with food and headed out to the deck, spending several hours laughing and catching up, rather oblivious to the party going on inside. “How did you two get together,” we asked JoDee eagerly. “David won’t tell us.” We heard about Beth’s obsessive-compulsive roommate and Sarah’s business plans for opening a boutique. We exchanged memories and retold favorite old stories. We have needed such an evening for years, living so far away from each other. Even in the best of situations, we are a disparate bunch, a mixture of adopted and biological siblings, each with our own strong personality. Bob is a personal trainer in Cincinnati. The girls both live in New York: Beth is a professional jazz musician. Sarah is a buyer for Armani Exchange. David has worked a series of retail jobs in St. Louis. Each of us is full of excuses (valid or not) of why we don’t stay in better contact with one another. Only the two New Yorkers see each other regularly, as they live in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. The rest of us depend upon Mom to act as a messenger between us, going months without talking to one another. In a fragile world, these siblings ties are growing more and more shaky, as we, for all our similarities and shared history, drift farther and farther apart.  At midnight, the food put away and the kitchen cleaned up, Matt and I moved to the hotel, not wanting to add our contribution to the growing plumbing problem in the basement. We get up the next morning and put in a day’s work—decorating the room where the church reception was to be held, practicing for several hours, running countless trips from the condo to the church with carloads of cake and decorations, gifts and clothes. Late in the afternoon, we gathered for pictures. Who are we? I wondered as I looked at these beautiful family members, dressed in their wedding finery. Mom was stunning in a floor-length black dress with a dusty blue jacket, carrying the evening bag and wearing the diamonds inherited from her grandmother. Dad, who as a minister does countless weddings a year, was simply dressed for work. Bob was parading around in a new black suit. My always-fashionable sisters were gorgeous in navy dresses. Beth, staring at my red dress, muttered that maybe I didn’t get the memo about the colors. I shot back that I had asked if I had to wear blue and was told I could wear whatever I wanted. I wanted to wear red. I always want to wear red.  Our 90 year-old grandmother arrived in a wheelchair, escorted by my aunt and uncle. She has been failing in the last year, dementia taking over more and more of what was once her sharp mind. In the weeks prior to the wedding, when agitated, she would tell my parents that she was going to “run away.” “You don’t want to do that,” my mother would say to her, “the kids are all coming home soon. Don’t you want to see the kids?” Well, yes, she would admit, she did want to see the kids. Daily her mind continues to go, sadly this may be her last great memory. “We’re all here,” we greeted her as she came into the church. “Grandma, everyone is here.” At some point, Beth and her boyfriend began the music, easing us into the evening with their saxophone and guitar duo. The touch of your hand is like heaven, a heaven I’ve never known…my one and only love… they played as the guests were seated. I played Brahms’ A Major Intermezzo, Op. 118 as the grandmothers were escorted down the aisle. Matt sang as the mothers came in. Beth’s boyfriend joined me for the bridesmaid processional. David’s church choir sang while the bride walked down the aisle with her brother, and suddenly, we were all in place.  “We are now going to interrupt this concert to have a wedding,” my dad announced as the congregation chuckled. Many have watched us grow up playing music and had a special interest to see us as now professional musicians at work. How fitting for David, who as much as all of us, spent years and years in music lessons. Concert over, the ceremony began, Bob wiping his nose repeatedly on his new black suit. Watching the couple, I found myself marveling at the surprises life throws us. After all, the chance of these two finding one another were laughable. Like many people, both of them might have imagined that they might never have a chance at marriage or a family. While their stories of personal heartache and loneliness are their stories to tell, not mine, the likelihood of any of us being there witnessing their marriage was astonishing. I realized that in the purest sense, us coming together to celebrate the two of them had made us all behave better towards one another, had made us even for a short time believe once again in the simplicity of love, romance and the importance of family relationships. No doubt, all too soon we would once again revert to harboring old grudges and not trying hard enough to connect with one another, but for tonight David and JoDee had managed to bring out the best in all of us. As the ceremony continued, Dad spoke to the couple, and using an Old Testament lesson of the Israelites in exile as a model, he talked about the common human condition of feeling like a stranger in a alien place. He told them that no matter how exiled or lonely they may have felt in their lives, that in finding one another they had finally found home. Vigorously, they both nodded their agreement, sealing his words. All at once, David was married, and marched his bride down the aisle. The music began again, and the night’s celebrations unfolded—music, dancing, food and conversations with friends, the romance of a wedding doing its magic on each of us. I suppose that’s why we bother with weddings in the first place, because somehow in the grand overblown affair that nearly every wedding becomes, we can believe that anything is possible, that lifelong romance is as simple as saying “I do”, that love conquers all. It is a cliché. I think that’s the point. Their honeymoon delayed for several weeks, JoDee and David spent much of the next day with the rest of us—opening presents, and eating leftover barbeque and wedding cake. We made a run to Ted Drewes, the famous St. Louis frozen custard joint. The sisters had a coffee date, laughing and crying over shared confidences. We made one last trip to see Grandma in the nursing home, bringing her a piece of cake. “The music was so beautiful,” she kept repeating to herself. “The music was so beautiful.” “We love you, Grandma,” we answered her. “And look! We’re all here.” Weeks later, we are scattered once again across the country. JoDee and David are settling into their new married lives, with four coffeemakers and five sets of silverware and what seems like hundreds of other gifts, which must be somehow stuffed into their tiny apartment. Mom reports that there is still wedding cake in the freezer. The other day, I picked up my dress from the drycleaners and hung it back in my closet where it will wait for the next wedding. While David and JoDee have not known each other long, they consider themselves lucky to have found one another and are determined to make this marriage work. They have as much chance as any of us. I browse the photos and smile, remembering.  Thanks to Gerald Wiens (Uncle Gary) for use of photographs |
Contact Amy Greer at: amy@tenthousandstars.net
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