Cue Farewell Music

I probable mentioned how crazy-town it got the week before Golda's farewell.  I thought several times, "I can't believe so many people do this!"  On top of all the wonderful chaos, I had said yes to putting together a musical number for the farewell meeting.  I play in sacrament meeting all the time.  People probable get sick of me.  So it should have been no big deal to find a piece, but it turned into a time-sucking ordeal.  Everyone wanted to play, and I could not find a piece for all of us.  After finally nixxing a Circe/Golda duet, I decided on a cello-violin duet, so Araceli could be part of the farewell.  After MUCH searching, I found an arrangement and bought it.

Parts of it had SIX flats.  Seriously, why?  And on string instruments, too.  No string instrument sounds good when you can't play any of the open strings, but we won't go into that.  Araceli even had her teacher help her with it, but we could not play it.  It was flat-out too hard.  See what I did there?  ha ha.

We gave up, and Ruby stepped in, as she so often does, to save the day.  Ruby and I played a violin duet that I had previously played with Golda, Golda on flute, How Great Thou Art.  It sounds beautiful with two violins, but there was one tiny glitch: Ruby hasn't practiced violin for 8 years.  Nonetheless, she awed me with her abilities, coming in and playing it nicely.  We still had to practice several hours. over the course of a week, but we pulled it off.  I don't know how we sounded, but I felt good about playing with Ruby.  We loved it, and it was magical to play together in that setting.  I definitely felt the spirit, and I was honored to be included in the program, especially with Ruby.

That said, it took some serious doing to get it together, hence the pics.  Don't forget, it was summertime, and we were trying to do summer, doggone-it!  On top of that, I was texting all kinds of people about all kinds of things, probably farewell-food related.  Ruby laughed as she snapped pictures of me trying to get in a few minutes of post-pool practice.

I loved this time with Ruby, and this time in general.  I knew it was going by too quickly, and I knew I wasn't fully able to take it in at the time.  Thanks for documenting a moment of craziness, Ruby. I wouldn't trade any of it for anything.