Salving Stress

Yesterday afternoon I had to kick someone out of my office to take a call from my best friend. But even as we attempted to catch up on each other's busy lives, people were lining up outside my open door like waiters ready to serve me up another helping of the problems du jour. I finally had to tell her I simply couldn't talk because I had to attend to the fires that were burning all around me.

I was happy to escape from all of those problems in the late afternoon to go play music with Deborah and Bill. As I touched the keys of Bill's 9-foot Steinway, the stress started to loosen. I played through the Rachmaninoff Vocalise with him and the deep rich sound of his 200-year-old double bass carried me a little further away from my earlier day. When Deborah arrived we launched into the Strauss Nocturno, one of the most romantically beautiful pieces ever written. I threw myself into the big chords, with Bill telling me to roll them from the bottom up "yeah, like that!" Ahhhhh....

At the conclusion of our coaching session with Bill (our NSO bass player who lowers himself to deal with the likes of us), we thanked him profoundly for all his help and for not ever yelling at us. He jokingly said, "Maybe next time." Deborah packed up her 6-foot instrument and we headed out into the real world. We hugged each other as we said goodbye for a while from playing together as she goes off to China with her family and I go off to graduations with mine.

Yoga with my wonderful teacher Leyla continued to heal my stress. I have to concentrate so totally in yoga to keep my balance and hold the poses that I couldn't possibly think of my earlier stresses. We worked hard on abs and lunges and even did a partner pose to pull the stress out of our wrists that tend to type all day. What really made my day however was a comment from my friend Mary after class that she thoroughly enjoys reading my Blog as I describe the minutiae that defines my life. That brought the first really big smile that my face had worn all day. My stress was healed and ready for another round in the day to follow.