Today I worked from home and walked with my neighbor, who is moving soon. Travalon cooked hotdogs for the kids at work (he hates hotdogs), then he handed out fruit to kids in the neighborhood from a food truck called the Munchmobile:
Mmm! The fruit looks delicious!
Right after work I drove to Holy Name Heights for an organ recital by my OTHER choir director, and since the Dairyman's Daughter works there, she was able to reserve a conference room for us to have dinner. She picked up a lasagna, and I told her to add a salad and garlic bread and I would pay her for it. Rich brought juice and mints, Kathbert brought homemade gingerbread for dessert, Jilly Moose brought veggies and homemade garlic bread, and another woman brought strawberries, raspberries, and red wine. The Single B-Boy thought he was going to fly to Northern Wisconsin, but the weather wasn't good enough, so he was able to join us too. There were some pretty flowers in front of Holy Name Heights.
After dinner we went up to the chapel, and then our group scattered because Kathbert and the other woman sat with some people they knew, Rich and the Dairyman's Daughter sat with the man who makes fabulous desserts and his son, and Jilly Moose and I sat with Pete the Sailor Man, the guy Travalon and I went hiking with at the start of the pandemic, and another woman. The penultimate piece of the concert was an arrangement of Romanian dances by Bartok, but the last piece was the Bach transcription of the Vivaldi Concerto in D Minor from L'Estro Armonico, and I was in heaven while listening to that. Kathbert said she looked over and saw the look of pure bliss on my face.
I can't say if my life is a series of wacky coincidences or a carefully scripted story, but I like to believe it's the latter. Vivaldi taught me to read music as a child, as I may have mentioned on this blog before, when I loved his Concerto in A Minor for one violin so much that I would follow the written music while listening to it. In college I listened to L'Estro Armonico over and over, and when I pondered what had moved him to write such wondrous music and then learned he was a priest, that was one of the main things that attracted me to the Catholic Church. Once I became Catholic, I would pray for his soul in Purgatory (was it there? who knows?), and once I had a dream that if I went to Mass every Wednesday and Saturday, I would see a miracle. So I started going every Wednesday and Saturday, and I had a dream that in Paris I saw the Pope on a see-through bus, and he saw me and smiled and waved at me. When we were actually in Paris for World Youth Day, Ethel and I got separated from our group and were so far back from the Papal Welcome that we decided to cut out early and go to a Vivaldi concert at Sainte-Chapelle, but all the nearby metro stops were closed, so we were running, trying to get there in time. Suddenly they wouldn't let us cross the street, and then along came the Pope in a see-through vehicle, and I waved at him, so he saw me, smiled, and waved back at me. Just like my dream!! And it was all because of Vivaldi! Ethel pointed out that was the miracle that I had been promised, and that maybe it meant Vivaldi's soul had been released from Purgatory. I have often felt that Vivaldi is pulling some strings for me from heaven - he even found me a husband who shares his name - and tonight I felt like we were in total communion. If it is all true, I hope he is one of the first people to meet me when I get to heaven. If it isn't true, then that is a seriously crazy series of events.
Famous Hat
No comments:
Post a Comment