The halls of Edmond Santa Fe felt more like an event center than a high school today. Hundreds of kids were there for the strings contest, moving between rooms with instruments, sheet music, and nervous energy. You could feel the tension in the air—everyone hoping and praying for that “One.”
There was a small scheduling scramble with Haze. His own private teacher was originally assigned as his judge, so they had to move him to a different time slot so there was no bias. We ended up shifting from the assigned time of 10:17 to 9:00 a.m. so he could play for another judge and didn’t find out until almost 8am this morning.
He played his violin solo and got a “One” – finding out only after he’d finished his #StarbucksLavenderMatchaLatte (and for the record his hair matched his drink). He’s literally a walking advertisement for Starbucks. And that’s when I realized my homebrew in a #RiverwindCasino tumbler was out in the car, and if I was really going to “drive the simulation” with my #ConverseAndCoffee, I’d have to go back to the car and get it from Papa’s truck (yes, he came too).
Crowds like this can still be a little strange for me. My mental health is doing better lately, but big, busy spaces sometimes pull me back into that foggy depersonalized/derealized feeling where everything seems unreal. Today I tried to stay grounded. At one point I ended up leaned over the floor taking a picture of my shoes next to an ad for “Oklahoma Strings,” which felt like the most normal photo I could take to “Preserve the Miracle.”
Haze doesn’t want his picture posted online, so the picture of our shoes on hallowed ground, well, that’s the best I could do.
So the miracle…
Before his viola solo we went out to the car to warm up, grab my Riverwind Casino coffee tumbler and trade the violin for a viola. When we got his instrument out back inside we discovered the temperature change threw the viola out of tune. I pulled up a tuner on my phone, but while Haze was tuning, one of the strings snapped.
Luckily I’d recently bought a full set of replacement strings for Haze’s viola from my old violin teacher, Mrs. Guevara at Oklahoma Strings. I hadn’t actually restrung an instrument in about thirty years, though, so I told Haze to find someone who knew what they were doing.
We found Mrs. Uthe, who helped us get things sorted out. Between her and the accompanist (a professor from Southern Nazarene University over in Bethany) they got the instrument tuned and ready again. And Mrs. Mann made sure we had all the right music at the right room, even those the books belonged to our private teacher, Mrs. Bush.
Today was a reminder of how much of it runs on people quietly helping each other out.
Today the lessons in the simulation were: patience, perseverance, and excellence. And thankfulness for great teachers (you too Mrs. Geist from OKYO – didn’t see you today but maybe you were judging).