Today I am Writing: On Preparing

I have just spent an hour and a half in my kitchen, preparing food for multiple events. I've been chopping vegetables, roasting sweet potatoes, opening cans and draining all variety of things. Since this is the wrap-up of the season where I-do-not-have-a-lot-of-time, my recipe choices were ones I know, ones I've prepared on a multitude of previous days. Hence, I was like a little wizard, throwing ingredients from right to left, scooting with little steps from drawer to stove to sink. Thinking but not too much, humming just a little, pleased.

It struck me that I was preparing in the active sense for these friends that I will feed, but that it was enabled by the long preparing, learning these recipes over many years.

I had just returned from a recital, dressed in my concert blacks, my curls pinned back behind my ears. Beethoven, Wagner, Donizetti, Brahms; Debussy, Britten, Bernstein. I listened to my friend, the baritone; I responded to him and sometimes he responded to me, and we had a lovely moment, just making our instruments sing. I played with great ease, and I played with a lot of love. For what may be the first time ever, I played without evaluation, without the tyranny of imagining what all those hard-to-read faces were behind-the-scenes thinking. I just made the music, free.

He and I have been preparing, of course; rehearsals and lessons, the working it out alone and together over the months of this now-ending semester. But my agendas have felt heavy over these wintry months, and my preparation felt less focused than I would have liked. And yet, today, as we stood backstage and heard the audience gathering, I felt ready. Excited.

As I stood there, bouncing on my toes a bit, waiting for that door to swing open towards me, I thought: How many backstages have I seen?

And the answer is: A lot.

And there have been the practice rooms, and the hours churned out, and the audiences causing a bit of the stomach-lining-terror, and the fingers aching and the back near breaking from bench after many bench, adjusted just for me.

It turns out that a lot of preparing, went into today.

I didn't see today in my mind's eye, when I found the recipes, when I closed down the music buildings. But today, I am simply very glad that I diligently prepared, anyway.

I think: Isn't it true that every day is preparation, for another?
And I find myself wondering: Am I preparing, well?