A music weekend

I was home alone for 48 hours. It was pretty great.

Keith left for Eau Claire for rehearsal with the EC Chamber Orchestra on Friday evening. He had rehearsal Friday night and Saturday morning. Usually that is followed by a Saturday evening concert, and just as usually I go along. Keith has been playing with this group almost since its inception over 23 years ago. Back then, he would take the kids with him and they would all stay at his parents. It gave the boys an opportunity to see their grandparents, and me a chance to get things done and recharge. It was perfect. There are only 4-6 concerts/season, so it wasn’t like I was sending them away all of the time.

There were a few years that the boys were teenagers that they had other things that kept them home and Keith went on his own and stayed with his mom and dad. A wise person once told me the best gift I could give my mother-in-law was time with her son, so I always tried to do that. These weekends were perfect. After Keith’s dad passed, and then his mom moved to Madison, I wondered where he would stay for these weekends away. He matter-of-factly told me that the chamber orchestra would put him up in a hotel. What? A free hotel stay? With a pool? Now it was time for the boys to stay home and me to go along. When Benjamin went to college in Eau Claire, he dutifully attended all of the concerts with me. I don’t remember Alexander ever coming – he legitimately always had other places to be (he did not use his favorite excuse, “I have a food in the oven.”)

This weekend the concert was on Sunday afternoon. I’m not sure who scheduled it that way, but I didn’t think many people would prioritize a Sunday afternoon concert in May. There are just too many spring chores and grad parties and weddings and other things going on. Attendance was lower than usual, but not as bad as I had thought. But the Saturday night free worked out perfectly, because another ensemble Keith plays with had a gig. The After Hours Big Band played with the high school jazz band in Harmony, MN. It was a bit over two hours to drive there from Eau Claire, but luckily another player from the orchestra also plays in After Hours, so he and Keith could ride together. That is why I stayed home. I had spring chores to do and Keith had company.

I pulled weeds and swam and floated and vacuumed and swam and hot tubbed and moved piles around and worked on the family reunion (a month away!) and thoroughly enjoyed my solitude.

Then I was so excited that he came home. 🙂