I was considering a new blog for a new diversion in my life, titled, "I am a musician". This was due to the purchase of a rather sorry mandolin and an intention, after all my previous abandoned efforts, to learn to play a musical instrument. I was prevaricating over the blog idea, because I felt almost certain to fail in this endeavour and so, to draw attention to my failure in public would seem a foolish undertaking. As things have panned out, I began to play a little two weeks ago, slowed largely by the pain in my fingers, only to discover, following an accident on Saturday one week ago, that after all, I was a parent and not a musician at all.
Our day had begun a little slowly, but the list of things to do was begining to stretch credulity, so we set out around 10 in the morning to begin. A couple of hours of activity at a local scouting centre, before a trip to the coast to watch the round-the-island boat race getting blown over, I thought. Just ten minutes of fun in to the day and eldest son fell off an obstacle. I sauntered over, expecting a winded child.
Eldest son was in pain, a lot of pain and I could tell, from my own experience that it was probably not cracked rib pain. Possible bowel injury I thought loudly, but to myself. Certainly worth a check up at A&E. And so it was that we waited in A&E for 3 hours, and then we were seen, and then my week began. We stayed a week in hospital, son and parent. I escaped most afternoons to keep the office work ticking over, returning for medical progress reports and to sleep over, the unsteady rhythm of worried parent and boy under a frequent observation routine. The staff in the children's ward were supreme, I couldn't have wished for better care or information, but in a curious way it was the other parents that brought the most comfort from the stress of our shared situation. I had a memorable and highly theraputic chat one evening with a Mum whose daughter had landed heavily off a rope swing. Just ten minutes in the tea room, sharing our stories of what terrible parents we were and how it had brought us to that place.
Son is recovering from, as it turned out, a ruptured spleen. A week of bed rest and pain control in hospital, a slow return to mobility this week and then a slow, careful return to normality. Three months before contact sports can be considered. I have to smile a little at this final milestone because eldest son has two brothers, which by themselves constitute a frequent contact sport - they have been asked to tone it down a bit, and perhaps they will remember for a few days at a time.
I am back to work and, just a little, back to being a musician. My fingers are still sore, partly as a result of the unaccustomed fretting, but magnified by the poor instrument which, as a result of a bent neck, has a rather high action. The E strings are 100th of an inch steel, stretched hard and deliver a cutting action to the finger tip. I'll stick with the exercises a while I know, but will I find the energy to practise? I never did before, but then I never had an instrument to call my own before. There are three guitars in the house, amongst other things, but none belong to me. The mandolin is comfy, it is petite. I can sit in my crowded office at home and transpose Internet guitar tabs onto it and the noise needs hardly pass the door. Old, bent and cracked (and poorly played) it may be, but I like the tone of the mandolin. I remain a musician and a parent for now.
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