This morning's piano lesson deserves--and will get--a long, meditative writing from me. But apparently meditative is not where I am right now, these days, as I start really to face the fact that I'm leaving soon, which means that I have to be packing soon. Which means that I have to be shipping soon. Which means that my mind is skittery.

Which is exactly why I loved my wise piano teacher even more this morning when she was able to gauge exactly where I was coming from, with my admission that it's been weeks since I played, and then to take it all in stride. "I know," she said excitedly. "Let's do some practical musicianship. It's so much fun." And away we went: soon, I was improvising and composing melodies and harmonies according to the parameters she was setting for me. Half an hour later, after telling me that I'd basically just passed a Grade 5 examination, she said, "You see, if you were staying here, I could do so many things with you..." When I left her house, forty minutes after having arrived, I felt able once more, somehow reselved. And even if the rest of the day turned out to be kind of a wash, work-wise, it was worth it for that transformation this morning. I was as happy as a bee in lavender.

Sadnesses creep in at the cracks in my daily life now, every once in awhile. There's no time for anything more frequent than that. And I'm too happy about going back to my people, anyhow.