Category: Just for fun
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Mrs. Tubbles -
Last Sunday night, my husband and I drove to nearby Roanoke for a jazz show. I didn’t look at who we were going to see — I figured I wouldn’t know who they were — I was just excited to go hear live music.
When we climbed the stairs inside The Jefferson Center, we expected to be directed into the 925-seat theater where we’d seen the Preservation Hall Jazz Band play a Christmas show. But instead, the usher guided us to continue down the hall to the end, where a bar was set up, and then to turn right through a corridor that snaked into a small room with maybe ten rows of folding chairs and a raised stage at the front. The ceiling was high — 20 or 30 feet above us — and long, black folds of fabric draped all of the walls. Two tables stretched along the back wall to offer up cheese plates, cake and cookies, and coffee. It felt cozy and intimate, like a little jazz club.
At 7 o’clock, the lights went down and the band came out. A tiny woman sat at the wooden grand piano to our left, two men took their places at the back of the stage on bass and drums, a silver-haired woman strapped on her saxophone, and a woman about my size entered last, trumpet in hand, and took center stage. Nobody spoke. She put the trumpet to her lips in the quiet. It sparkled in the spotlight. And when her music came out, I was blown away.
A woman trumpeter led the band. As I listened to this big sound come out of this small woman, walls fell down for me. Last night, I put on a Blue Note Edition jazz playlist on Spotify while my husband made dinner. I scanned the artists on the playlist, and as I scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled, I saw maybe 3 women’s names. In 90 songs.
My heart soared as I watched her play. Every image I have of trumpeters is of men. I have no ambition to ever play the trumpet, but it’s hard to describe how meaningful it is to see someone who looks like you do something cool like this. I fell in love with her.
After a couple of songs, the bandleader introduced the band, and she introduced herself. “I’m Bria. Just google ‘Bria trumpet,’” she said with a smile. “It’s easier than trying to spell my name.” I did just that when I got home. Her name is Bria Skonberg, from Chilliwack in British Columbia.
She is fun, humble, and charming, and she is radiant on both trumpet and vocals. With each song, my heart grew bigger. She mentioned that she’d become a mom in the past five years, which made me love her even more. She sang an arrangement of John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy,” which I used to sing to our son, and I had to get out my handkerchief to wipe my eyes.
At the end of the show, after we thought it was over and everyone was putting their coats on to leave, the lights went down again, and the band came back out with a special guest: a girl trumpeter from a local high school. Bria counted off, and gave the stage to the 17 year old. As the young trumpet player improvised and began to look a little nervous, I fell another layer deeper in love as Bria sensed her nerves, led her, and led the band to support her by calling out guidance, pulling the band together with eye contact and gestures and smiles, and near the end of the song, leading a call and response with their two trumpets. The audience rose from their seats and gave the student a standing ovation.
The sound in the space was clear as a bell, and the show was intimate, with maybe only 100 people in the room. It turns out the venue has a whole jazz series: Jazz Club at Jefferson Center. We’ve got tickets to a couple more upcoming shows. We had no idea we’d find a jazz scene in our little Appalachian mountain community. And Bria Skonberg is now in regular rotation on my Spotify.
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Last week was A Week at work. My husband and I had a getaway on the calendar that we’d scheduled back in August, and I was grateful for the chance to put our everyday lives away for a couple of days. After riding hills and mountains all the time here at home, we wanted to see what it felt like to ride flat roads. And we both were craving the coast.
We put our bikes on the roof rack and headed to a little bed and breakfast we’d visited back in 2021. When the innkeeper asked what time to expect us for breakfast, Brian and I looked at each other — do we want to eat before we ride, or after? The whole reason I exercise is so I can eat. I wanted the anticipation of breakfast while we rode.
“Food is my reward. I want to eat after we ride,” I said. We told the innkeeper 9:30. We got up early Saturday morning, before the sun, and rode out as soon as it was light.
We rode close to 30 miles and it felt great. It was so easy compared to the hills back home. The roads were quiet, and the sunlight glowed on the marsh. When we returned for breakfast, the coffee, fruit, oat pancakes, sausage patties, and baked egg with cheese and dill were deeply satisfying.
We didn’t have anything else to do, so we went for another 30 miles after breakfast, this time to several of the nearby beaches.
We showered, got lunch at a Mexican restaurant, where I ate all the guacamole I could bear, got a coffee and walked around the quaint little town of Gloucester, and then went back to our room, where we collapsed into a deep and beautiful afternoon nap.
Besides eating, weekend naps in daylight, where your mind and body stop with the mania — no more thinking, no more doing, just blissful surrender to daytime drowsiness — are one of my favorite things in life.
Sunday morning, we rode again before another delectable breakfast, this time of spinach, egg, and cheese casserole, fruit, bacon, asparagus, and lemon panna cotta with honey and toasted almonds. In all, we rode close to 90 miles over the weekend. It’s probably been 20 years since I rode that much in that condensed a time. It felt great to empty my mind and my body, and to come back home refreshed.
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This morning, my husband headed out for a bike ride. I stayed home. I had work to do.
I didn’t love working on a Saturday morning. I regretted pitching the talk I now had to prepare for. Why did I sign up for something that adds more work for myself?
When I finished my slide deck, though, I felt an enormous sense of satisfaction. Then, especially since it was Saturday and I’d finished my most important To Do, I felt a release, and an enormous sense of freedom.
The sky I saw through the window was a brilliant blue with crisp white clouds. I had errands to run, so I grabbed my purse, threw on sunglasses and a driving hat to keep my hair out of my eyes, and tucked into our little Mazda Miata. I queued up R.E.M. on the stereo and cranked the engine.
When I pulled out of the neighborhood, felt the sun and wind on my skin, and heard the first song of the Green album start playing, I felt a surge of joy. What a reward after working this morning! I zipped through the gears, the round knob of the gearshift smooth in my hand. I sang all the songs — Pop Song 89, You Are The Everything, World Leader Pretend — and thought fondly of my 13 year old self with my besties when we saw R.E.M. on their Green tour.
The blushing pink cheeks of maples contrasted against blue sky. VT game day flags flapped from car windows. I don’t care about football, but I love game day in a college town. The air is full of excitement and smiles, and the sidewalks are full of garish collegiate colors.
I drove with the top down, happy that my work was done, energized by the reward of feeling the wind and listening to R.E.M. in a zippy car under a September sky.
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It took me a good 15 minutes of staring at the ceiling tiles from the dentist chair before I realized I was staring at ceiling tiles. I had completely zoned out. When I zoned back in, I noticed the patterns of holes on the tiles and the flat metal grid.
Then I realized I was laying back in the chair with my eyes open. I wondered, wow, is that creepy to the hygienist, for someone to lay there just staring up the whole time? Do I usually lay here with my eyes open? I think I usually close them.
So I closed my eyes. That felt weird, too. I thought, what must it be like to be a hygienist, hovering above people’s mouths all day, dealing with whatever they’re doing with their eyes?
Curiosity flooded me. I had so many things I wondered. Was it satisfying to clean teeth? It must be. They come in all crusty and plaqued, and you get to make them all smooth and shiny. Like watching crumbs and pet hair disappear when you vacuum.
I desperately wanted to ask about the eye thing. What do people usually do? Did she have a preference? Is it weird for me to ask? I thought about this for a good ten minutes as I alternated between staring at the ceiling tiles, then thinking that was creepy and closing my eyes, but then knowing my eyes were jumping behind my lids because I was so restless in my wondering, so I opened them again.
When her hands came out of my mouth, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I asked, “Do most patients lie here with their eyes open or shut?”
She laughed and pointed to the loupes on her glasses. “It’s about 50/50, but luckily with these things on my glasses, I can’t see anymore what people are doing with their eyes — I just see the area of the mouth I’m working on. I always wanted to tell people, you are welcome to close your eyes! Think of this as a rest time. I felt funny about them staring at my forehead. In my old office I had a poster on the ceiling so patients had something to look at.”
She said sometimes people become so relaxed with their eyes closed that they actually fall asleep. “I’ve even had snorers! The only problem with falling asleep is that then their mouths tend to relax so much that they don’t stay open for me to get in there and clean.”
I felt much better after asking. Satisfied. I closed my eyes while she finished up, and they no longer jumped behind my lids.
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Sometimes, I don’t want to get up at 4:45 in the morning to go to the pool and swim. Sometimes, the night before, I’ll weigh whether I really need to go, maybe I could just walk for exercise later in the day instead. Sometimes, when my alarm goes off, I lay in bed and debate whether to go.
At that point, the cats are walking on me, so I have to get up to feed them anyway. But sometimes I consider, should I just put my robe on and get back in bed after I feed them? Or should I suit up?
When I get to the pool, sometimes I think, well, I can always stop early if I don’t feel like doing the full workout. Fifteen laps isn’t 25, but it’s better than zero. And then I start swimming, and I think, I can stop after this set if I want to.
Sometimes, I go through all of those debates with myself. I debate because it’s hard, because I don’t want to, because I want to skip ahead to the breakfast part of my day.
But one of my favorite moments in life, and it happens almost every time I go through all of this mental nonsense about “do I swim? do I not swim?”, one of my favorite moments that I savor every time it happens, is when I touch the wall after my 25th lap and know that despite it all, I swam. I did something good for myself, I didn’t give in, I didn’t give up, and now I’m done, I got it over with, I don’t have to exercise any more that day, it wasn’t really that bad, after all, and I feel kinda good, and now I get to get out and get dressed and go home to drink coffee and eat my oatmeal with berries and nuts and nutella.
Butterfly Mind 