Trading Fives

5 things I love about my wife
1) She doesn't ever keep score. We've been married for almost six years now, and in that time I've done and said plenty of stupid things. If she were the sort of person who held on to old hurts, she could make me feel pretty miserable. If she were the sort of person who needed a fair distribution of work and responsibilities for the house to function, I'd be in her constant debt. In fact, if J kept score at all, I think that our marriage would have started to look like that sad caricature of the couple who can't even enjoy being around each other because they have to keep up their leverage for the next fight. J forgives, never demands whats owed her, and pours herself out freely. There's a word for that, and it's grace.
2) She is really really talented. You get used to a person when you live for them long enough, so I'm not always conscious of the fact that J is the same girl who came into college playing jaw-dropping Brahms and Ginastera on the piano, and not only that, but was instantly the best flute player in school. It's easy to forget that she was a 4.0 student who wrote the best history papers in her class, edited everyone else's homework, and was also the captain of the all-star softball team. And tested out of theory and aural skills. And could sight sing anything put in front of her and recognize any harmonic progression immediately. And now she's my wife, and I'd almost forget all those things, except that she keeps on being talented and being offered jobs at Hochstein and revitalizing the church where she works.
3) She is a big picture person. She went for four years without any sort of clothing line in the budget. She loves new clothes. But she is incredibly patient, and she is much better about constantly minding the budget than I am. She knows when we need rules for the house, and when it's okay to splash in the mud puddles, even though that's against the rules. (More for James than me.)
4) She takes really good care of us. The most thrown together end-of-the-month leftovers we eat are so much better than anything I ever ate in grad school. She does laundry, she washes dishes, she packs meals, she remembers what I forget, and she stays awake when I come home late. All that would be amazing by itself, but it's even more special because she loves taking care of her men, and it's really obvious.
5) She is really, really, really good-looking. You just can't quite ever get used to it, either. You'd think that after living together for almost six years that it wouldn't be a big deal for your wife to walk inside the door, but when J comes inside it still feels like an event.

5 things I love about my son
1) He loves Steven Bear SO much. It warms my heart just to think about how much he cares for that grubby little bear. Whenever I put him to bed at night he holds him close to his face, and when I get him up in the morning he's usually sitting in his crib and snuggling him. He talks to him (they laugh a lot) takes him everywhere, and is the first thing he reaches for when he's scared or upset. When he eats, Steven has to sit next to him in the booster seat and have food on his tray. (J told me that today James wouldn't even open his mouth for food unless Steven "ate" it first.) The other night J said to me "I worry about that bear...I worry that he won't last as long as James is going to need him." I laid in bed and thought about how heartbroken James would be if (may it never happen) we lost Steven. It made me happy to see him nodding at Steven as they "chatted" when I got him up the next day.
2) Sometimes when I come home J will take James over to the window, and he'll watch me walk up the driveway and the front walk. He grins the whole way, and starts to bounce as I get closer. When I get to the door he'll start laughing and smush his nose up against the glass. It's really nice to know that someone is that happy to see you.
3) He climbs everything now. He isn't very good at it, but he's figured out that he can get on top of stuff if he gets his leg up. It's hysterical to watch him pit-patting over to the rubbermaid blockade in front of the stairs (he needs a running start) and then to lift his left leg up as high as it can go, trying so hard to get it up onto some sort of foothold. He can't get up more often than not, but when he does manage to get up on the blockade or the sofa, he'll just perch there for a few seconds with the most smug and pleased 15-month old grin you can imagine.
4) He loves bath time again. I don't know that he's quite as excited to be in the water as he used to be, or to play with his bath toys, but he loves to KICK. As soon as we lay him down he gets a big grin and looks at us, and then he flails his legs until he has so much water in his eyes that he has to stop. He loves it when we react with "indignation" and he's taken to shrieking as he goes. Occasionally he'll work up to a big "double-barreled" kick where he raises both legs up as high as they can go and then slams them down with a yell. Our bathroom floor is very wet in the evenings.
5) He is still little enough to hold comfortably, and he loves being held. Every once in a while when he comes running up with his arms lifted high, I'll think to myself "Again? James..." and then I think about how little time is left when he'll want to be held by his Daddy. And he's not that heavy yet. He is just the right size for holding.

5 things I love about playing the trumpet
1) I used to get genuinely scared of playing a part other than first trumpet. Did it mean that I wasn't good enough? That I wasn't the best trumpet player in the room? Now I love section playing. I love section playing of all kinds. It is deeply satisfying to play the low note of an octave with another trumpet player and to strike the note precisely in tune with just the right articulation and color. It's satisfying to zap the offbeats with a three or four man section at a pops concert, and it's satisfying to do a slow crescendo in a soft brass chorale that builds and builds until the power of the section is shaking the stage.
2) The stereotype of the average meathead trumpet player is that he only wants to play one color: bright-high-loud. But there are so many colors in the sound of the trumpet, and it really is a joy to practice well-written music and explore them all. There's a loneliness in Quiet City that's hard to capture, and some of the sweetest trumpet moments are in the big Strauss pieces. It's great to play loud and brassy, of course, but there's also a fascinating palette of low sounds for the Carmen prelude and Shostakovitch 5. Practicing for an hour or two really is like putting colors on canvas.
3) It's really nice to have new etudes to practice. I got a new etude book in the mail last week, and it's been a blast to work through it. Even the smell of the manuscript paper is exciting. And not only is it good to have new material to practice, it makes all the old etudes fresh again when you come back to them with new ideas.
4) The trumpet is not too big. Can you imagine having to lug a cello or a harp everywhere? To have to drag that thing out to your car every day, let alone traveling by airplane? Every door would be an ordeal, and forget about going up and down stairs. On the other hand, oboes and clarinets are too small. If I played the oboe I'd lose my instrument once a week. Plus, they're to delicate. If you accidentally drop a trumpet, you might have to get a dent removed. If you accidentally drop an oboe, you're out $7000. I'd much rather play the trumpet
5) You can never have it all figured out. It's always a challenge to play high, loud, soft, low, fast, beautiful, and whatever else is difficult to do on the trumpet. And, contrary to what anyone will tell you, not even the truly great ones have it all figured out. There is always a note that isn't quite secure or an interval that's a little difficult. And that's what makes it so satisfying to play the trumpet well.

5 things I love about living in Western New York
1) There's coffee everywhere. As someone who has personally lived in the South, I can attest to the fact that you have to go to a mall to find any sort of coffee shop, and even then it's usually a Starbucks. (I think there was one Dunkin Donuts about 6 miles away from where I worked.) Here, there's a Tim Horton's in every little hamlet, not to mention all of the local coffee shops. If you need coffee, you can find it. And living here, we need coffee.
2) Yes, the snow is no fun to drive in. But I do love the snow. When you're home for the day and it's snowing outside, it's hard to imagine anything more beautiful. And as much as snow can be ugly when it's all browned and salted, it's beautiful when it's laying all white in the backyard and nested in the trees. I might be an old man in Florida some winter, but for now I love the winters here.
3) The Buffalo Bills. Chris Kelsay retired yesterday, which anywhere else in the league would have been a two sentence blurb at the bottom of the paper. Who cares about a backup defensive end? But in Buffalo, if you've lived with the team and suffered with the team and really get what the city is about, you'll always be a hero. It's a very unique fraternity of suffering up here...but the team means more here than any glitzy big city with multiple championships in storage.
4) My family lives here. I have five siblings, and they are absolutely my favorite people and my best friends. Not one of them lives more than a half-hour away. I'm trying very hard not to take this season for granted.
5) The RPO is here. I loved living in Chicago and going downtown to watch the CSO. I love listening to the New York Phil on the radio and hearing the great orchestras play live. There will never be an orchestra for me like the RPO, though. I still can't believe that I get to sit under the great chandelier at Eastman and play with them sometimes. It's a privilege like nothing else I do.

5 things I'm loving reading
1) Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's absurdly long. Gibbon made a lot of mistakes, and he brings some pretty ridiculous assumptions to the story from 17th century England. But it's an amazing book for anyone who's even remotely interested in Rome or Christianity, and I actually find myself wishing it was longer sometimes. I accidentally left it on the bench in the foyer at school today, so I'm hoping I still have my copy when I go in tomorrow!
2) 1 Peter. Just when you think you have the Koine vocabulary pretty well figured out you read 1 Peter and find yourself in the lexicon twice a sentence. It's unlike anything else in the New Testament stylistically and theologically. I need some recommendations for Petrine criticism, if anyone has any, and I'm sure that I'm only scratching the surface with my current notes.
3) Iliad book 14. The battle beside the ships is at fever pitch, and just when you think it has to be settled one way or another the troops regroup and it starts again. It would collapse into boring repetition if it was anything else, but the clanging of bronze and the speeches of heroes are like an old fine wine.
4) Metamorphoses Book II, which I was reading from an old school primer that stopped after Phaethon's fall. I started reading it on my trip out to San Francisco, and once I got back I stayed up late several nights to scribble out a translation in my notebook. I may need to buy a real copy of this sometime soon.
5) Dickens. I finished Pickwick Papers a few days ago, and am in Dickens withdrawal. The world just isn't quite as rosy when you aren't looking through the windowpanes of Dingley Dell every evening. Plus, Dickens' endings are never quite right. I suspect this is because the stories ought to go on forever.