Generosity

We have a semi-regular customer at the bookstore – she’s a musician with the Butte Symphony Orchestra.  Whenever the symphony is playing, she spends a good deal of time in the early afternoon browsing and choosing books for her local school library.  A generous soul.  Each time she is here, she playfully harasses me about going to see the concert.  I have a wide variety of excuses … all valid … and I hadn’t been to a concert yet.

She was here today … and again encouraged me to attend this evening’s concert.  At this moment in time, concerts are not a financial priority for me … so I picked a gentler excuse and told her that it wasn’t likely she’d see me there.  I was wrong.  A few minutes later my friend, Gretchen, stopped by to tell me she just got free tickets to the concert this evening – and I was the first person she thought of to invite.  There was no way that I wanted to turn away from that generosity.

The concert was in the beautiful MotherLode Theater.  It was wonderful to run into friends I haven’t seen in a while to chat for a moment here and there before we climbed our way up to the third floor balcony seating.  The concert was better than I had expected – the musicians and singers were very good and for the most part, the musical selection was enjoyable.  The conductor for the symphony was a little overblown – I could easily imagine her practicing her moves over and over again in the mirror to have just the perfect effect on the audience.  Annoying … to me anyway.  Her theatrics took away from my enjoyment of the music.  But, not enough to ruin the evening.  It gave us a chance to giggle.

It was a pretty darn good day.  It was absolutely wonderful to wake up and remember that the Venus is open again.  I walked over after enjoying a light breakfast and I sat with my friend, Noorjahan.  We chatted, read the paper together, and simply basked in the wonderful energy of the new space.  After she left, I chatted with Dan, Bob, Jennifer and glenn for a little bit and then headed off for the rest of my day with a box of my favorite tea in my pocket.