OK, go ahead. Laugh. But all day long I have been very excited about picking up my repaired clarinet. I keep humming that old Supremes song Back in my Arms Again.
I had brought the clarinet to a shop an hour away for repair; the rear register key was stuck. My teacher had tried to oil it and help me, but it was rusted shut – in less than a year since I had it in for a check up. Maybe I am a spitty clarinet player? The repair man showed me how to oil it today.
My teacher Pam had loaned me this beautiful professional French clarinet. It had beautiful sound. But the keys were all spaced and weighted slightly differently; it was like learning all over again. I missed the familiar clarinet I had been playing for just a year.
I also asked the repair man if he could get my teacher the screw she had lost for this clarinet as she had been using a screw from a smaller clarinet and it fell out once when I was playing. Clark, the repairman gladly found one for me, so I could return her instrument in better shape than when I borrowed it and she could return the smaller screw to her A clarinet
Once I got home and played it was back to where I had left off – not perfect, but good for an old woman who couldn’t read music and had never learned anything music until starting lessons around Memorial Day 2019
All day as I did errands, drove to and from River Falls, and even once I got it home and started playing scales and going through exercises, those words from the Supremes song run through my head, “…now, he’s back in my arms again
Right by my side
I got him back in my arms again
So satisfied
(Oooooh!)”
