Before dusk, I sat on a bench in my garage, the door open and the rain pouring on the driveway and trees outside. If there’s rain to be had, I highly recommend the sitting and listening method for discarding stress. It was exactly what I needed tonight. Even now, despite the chill coming through, I have the window open above my desk so I can continue to hear the rain.
Sitting on that bench, my thoughts wandered to the summer gone by. The schedule was busy. The commitments seemed higher than most summers. Work was… a lot. There were too few mornings in the kayak and afternoons at the beach. It wasn’t the summer I was aiming to have when it began. Yet, there were highlights and good things.
One of the really good things was playing saxophone in the Plymouth Municipal Band. And one of the best things was a particular night with the band.
It was one of several Thursday night concerts we played in City Park. The chairs and music stands filled up the small bandshell in the park. Members of the community sat on the benches and grass facing the stage. There’s a straightforward kind of delight in a simple city band concert. Anyone there is there for the music. No frills or fireworks; just enjoyable arrangements of popular tunes and patriotic marches, with concessions and conversations between songs.
This night was intended to honor the band directors who served through the years in Plymouth. Some of our songs were led by guest directors; retirees from the high school and middle school in the last several decades. As each one took their turn, our announcer would describe their career, and after the song, he’d ask all of their former students to stand. It was one of these guest directors who transformed the night from fun to deeply memorable for me.
Art Pahr directed the Riverview Middle School band for 31 years. During the 1960s, he wrote a fight song when the school had none. He’s coming up on 90 years old soon, if I remember correctly. When his name was announced that night, he made his way to the bandshell, leaning on a cane and accepting help to ascend the steps. He was the only director for whom we made sure to have a chair so he wouldn’t need to balance and stand. Art took his seat, smiled at the band, and spotted some of his former students. Then he raised the baton and launched our performance of that fight song he’d composed long ago. In the second half of the song, the joyous energy radiating from this elderly man lifted him from his seat. He stood and directed us with gusto, his smile stretching across his face, filling it with light that rendered him young again for a few minutes.
It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
I felt the privilege of my direct view of this man’s joy. My eyes were clouded with tears by the time we finished the song. The crowd cheered and clapped. In the days that followed, his aged, radiant face came back to me and put me on a recurring train of thought.
To spend the years I’m given on something that bears the fruit of such joy – such internal and shareable joy – and retains that joy still decades later, what a mighty life to live. If 90 isn’t too old to still engage in that joy and that life, then no age is too old to create them.
