I made it to today. I’m not sure why today seems so important to have made it to but it’s here and so am I. I’ve died a few times over in my head this last week. So the reality of waking to today seems nearly impossible. Yet here it is, today.
I woke with old cheerleader cheers stuck in my head. I’m not nor never was one. But they never go. You hear them a hundred times during a football game you have to sit through with band over 20 years ago and they surface quicker than I did out of bed 20 years later.
“Be aggressive, B E aggressive.” And thats the only words I know to this one. There are healthier outlets than aggression. It led me down the path to make sure I could still recall not just that cheer but all of them. I can. I won’t now. I don’t need to have them recited all day long. It will be like all my least favorite people cheering for me for the day. It makes no sense. They never would have then and would not today.
I wonder if I could still pick up my drum sticks and play? I’m sure I could. I played drums for years. And the flute, and the baritone, once the oboe. The trumpet. If I could play flute I knew I could pick up and play piccolo pretty easily. The saxophone wasn’t much different from the clarinet which wasn’t much different form the oboe. I just played what I felt like playing, filling in in places in the band that were missing. But mostly I liked the drums. The beat and rhythm of the band. I tap out old cadences from the drum line when I’m nervous.
I should have gone into music. I could have. I wasn’t great at any one instrument just passionate about them all. Music written was more like books than books were. The little drawings of a note on lines that made sound. It was fascinating to me to be able to take something you see and turn into something you can hear. Then love. Just by playing what you see.
My dad was passionate about music. I just grew up with it. Every instrument he could play. He could play them all. He is mostly a piano man. He walked around singing as if he was an opera singer. I would wake to cantoring. I knew his mood based on the music blaring from the speakers. I knew if the new world symphony was loud enough to hear down the road from the bus stop life was good. I am humming it now. Life is good. Life was always good. My dad has put this tune in my head for me today. Because I made it to today. This was his cheer song.
I’m not sure I didn’t go into music for any reason other than my passion for plants grew faster. Once I went into a greenhouse for the first time and left that big brick box of a school I was never going back. As soon as I discovered that my childhood love for dirt, trees and the outdoors could be something bigger than playing I did something bigger than play. I grew. I never thought of math with letters again. They weren’t needed to make plants grow. I never conjugated a verb again. And never really did when I was supposed to. I also stopped playing music. It just blew away. I walked outside one day and everything hard just blew away and what came simple filled me up. My passion for what came naturally to me outweighed my passion for what came naturally to my dad. It’s in there. Part of me. The love of music is his part of himself that is part of me. I’m full of music. I just keep my music very close to me. It is very personal. Every song has a memory. Every note was a story I was read. Every time right now I think of music I feel close to my dad. Who is going to use it to help me cheer through life. Not with aggression.
How cheerleading took me to this is impossible to even reroute. I showered this morning and tried to think of what I needed to think through but was full of cheers. I was cheering for myself? I dislike that thought that I’m my own cheerleader but I am. I can see them lined up on the sideline in my mind right now. A row of me in cute skirts and pompons cheering for myself. With no football game in the background. No one else in the stands but me. Watching me. I’m not going to be aggressive. I think I just like the beat to this one. I like the ones where the shout out to spell something important.
All week I was cheering for myself. To make it to today. None of the other days seemed to matter except this one. It’s just a plain old Friday. In my work Friday doesn’t mean a weekend off it means everyone else gets the weekend off needing me to keep them digging in the ground all weekend. Friday doesn’t mean more or less of anything. It was just in my mind Monday that I sure hope I make it to Friday. I don’t usually like to rush through life but I would take a free pass to blink to about June right now. Just skip this all. Hurry up and grieve, hurry up and open the world back up, hurry up and live for tomorrow. But today is what matters. Because it’s today. I spelled it out in my cheer even in the shower. Give me T!!! And then the rest of the letters came. With the ponytail swinging with ribbons tied, pompons held high and tossed in the air. And splits. There is always splits. Which hurt. And I can’t do. But I am imagining I can. Which still hurts.
Today. Friday April 17, 2020
Cheer on.
Aspenleaf 