It Was Early Spring. . .
~Shirl

New York City, the Isle of Manhattan. New York is beautiful in the Spring, trees are blooming, Central Park is amazing with its small rolling hills and ponds and trees, bushes and flowers blooming. There is a promise in the air, something not often felt or even noticed.

In that Spring of 1964 it was a quiet Sunday morning as I took the bus ride to a part of Manhattan I was unfamiliar with. When I stepped off the bus, there was a building across the street bearing the address I had been given. It was an unremarkable building in the architectural sense, a building maybe only 3 or so stories high in a neighborhood that looked to be mostly residential. I double checked the address with the slip of paper I held in my hand. This was it. I was a little nervous. My 24 year old self here in the BIG city alone, in unfamiliar territory.

I checked my watch. I was a bit early. Better to be early than late. I crossed the street, entered the building, walked up a flight of wide entry stairs and into the hall. It was a good sized room, probably could hold a hundred to two hundred folks. It was laid out with rows of folding chairs with a nice wide aisle down the middle. There was a lectern in the front center, facing out to the lines of neatly placed chairs. To the right of the lectern as I looked at it was a piano. Not a beautiful fancy shinning piano, a piano well used with the dings and marks of bumps from many years of use.

There were a few people walking around in the room, busy at some preparatory tasks here and there. There were a small handful scattered about in some of the seats. As I was walking towards a far too large selection of empty chairs, I made a decision of which I would sit in and went directly to it. At that same moment, a young man, maybe in his thirties walked quietly up to the piano, silently moved the seat back to accommodate the length of his legs and began to play.

Debussy’s Claire De Lune. A stillness and a silence, save for the beautifully haunting sounds of this music settled in over everyone and everything.

I sat transfixed, enveloped in music so clearly other worldly, so not of this earth, so heavenly that tears formed in my eyes. I certainly had heard Claire De Lune many times, played at Symphonies, in concerts, often by very famous and acclaimed pianists. But I had never heard or felt Claire De Lune played like this before. The music became a living thing that transcended all else in existence.

I don’t know when this extraordinary master of piano ended this piece. I don’t know who he was. I don’t know when the chairs filled up with people. I do not know what was said that Sunday morning in that church service. I do not know if anyone spoke. I don’t remember leaving there or when or how I got back to my place. But in 43 years I have never forgotten that Sunday experience of Claire De Lune. I can hear it yet if I close my eyes and listen. . . .it is forever embedded within the very cells of my body.

Enjoy this day whether you celebrate it in any particular way or not, it is a gift.

I wish you all Claire De Lune today. . . .

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