YESTERDAY MORNING

(Part 1 of A Bemoan, written on December 21)

Yesterday, December 20, 2017, started rotten. That’s probably bad grammar, but I do not care. The beginning of yesterday deserves no such consideration from me as good grammar.

The night before had been pleasant enough; delightful, even. I had spent most of the day, from 11:00AM until around 8:30 or 9:00PM, at Calvary Baptist Church, down on 57th street. That’s where the Christmas choir met that was to sing backup the following night for Kristyn and Keith Getty in Carnegie Hall. (You DO remember that I was to have my Carnegie Hall debut, right?)

Two hundred fifty people from thirty-one states and four countries gathered to form the choir, and I found the rehearsal time both exciting and inspiring. Further, along with the thrill of getting to see old friends, such as Angela, I got to meet new ones, such as her sister, Barbara, of whom previously I had heard much, and Cathy and David, of whom previously I had heard nothing. (By the way, Barbara is as riotously funny as Angela, and Cathy and David are two of the most servant-hearted people I have met). The music we rehearsed was truly beautiful, and I returned home later that evening, after a good chinwag with Angela and Barbara, feeling as if my heart were as full as it could be. I had no trouble falling asleep, even with such eager anticipation for the morrow.

Except the morrow (that is, yesterday) started rotten.

The first thing that happened was that I woke up. Now, some may see that as my first mistake, but the real problem was that the waking was not accompanied by any sense of refreshment, certainly not the kind of refreshment I expected to feel after such a wonderful day before. For some reason, I still felt a bit draggy, in spite of having allowed myself a little extra time to sleep.

I hauled myself out of bed to the “littlest room in the house” in order to perform my morning ablutions. One of those ablutions involved holding tissue to my nose and exhaling, rather sharply, through it. Some would call that my second mistake, since, immediately after the blast, a Red River began flowing from my right nostril at such a rate I could barely stanch the flow. I think it lasted for well over five minutes.

A little background: many NYC apartments use steam heat, which is extremely dry, and, since NY winter air tends to be fairly dry, as well, the combination can wreak havoc on one’s nostril lining; at least, it does on mine.

I finally stopped the bleeding, washed all the red out of my beard and mustache, and went to gather my clothes from my closet. We had been instructed, firmly, to wear ALL black, a sartorial trend that I have avoided as much as humanly possible but one which was a necessary evil in this case. Of course, my avoiding the use of all black meant I never put my black shirt next to my black pants. Therefore, I was a little worried that my pants might not be as black as they should be; maybe they were more of a charcoal gray. As it was, the pants were fine. It was The Shirt, to which I’d given no thought, that callously betrayed me. It was Navy blue. One could see that quite nicely when it was set next to real black, as the gentlemanly pants were.

I ran to the computer to look up men’s stores near me where I could purchase a solid black shirt that would be suitable. Due to my largesse, I had to go to one of those special stores that caters to men of great girth or height, and the nearest one was a 40 minute subway ride away. (Yeah, yeah. I know “largesse” has nothing to do with weight, but I’m not in the mood to say, “Because I’m so fat…”)

The choir was supposed to rehearse at 1:00PM, and we’d been politely asked to arrive around noon or noon-thirty, at the latest, in order to get final seating decided. I was going to be cutting it close to make the noon deadline if I was to buy that shirt, but I got my lower half garbed in the requisite black, threw on a shirt, and made my way to the subway. I had not taken the time to put on a belt. I did not think it was that important at the time.

I was mistaken.

Another instruction we had been given was that, after we met at the church, we would head across the street to Carnegie Hall to spend the rest of the day in rehearsal, and where the only place to store things would be beneath our rather narrow chairs. For this reason, I decided to abandon my backpack at home; I also decided not to take my cane, thinking I would be able to get along just as well without it.

Again, I was mistaken.

I was climbing up the stairs from the subway station, after making the rather lengthy trip downtown, when the waistband of my pants decided to take five. As it relaxed, the pants began sliding down. Of course, I could not allow this, so I hiked them back up and stuck one of my thumbs through a belt loop to hold them up on one side. The other side kept trying to slip farther down but couldn’t, because of its close connection to the side I was holding up.

(To be continued…)