Just another Rent-head

Choir began again yesterday. I woke up almost unreasonably excited to be going back, having missed the spring term because of my hip surgery. It felt like the first day of school. My anticipation was probably stoked by any number of things, including a need I've been feeling to add some scheduled activities to my week, and too, when chorus is in session, I have a standing Wednesday afternoon date with my choir buddy Lisa. But my excitement was also because we will be singing "Seasons of Love" from the Broadway musical Rent this term, one of my all time favorite show tunes. My daughter and I are big Rent-heads. We saw the show live when she was a teen, and watched the movie version with our cousins over several Thanksgivings, singing and dancing along to the songs in our distinctly not-spacious living room, falling over one another as we jumped about with wildly exuberant choreography. So my girl is almost as excited as I am about the inclusion of this piece in our fall repertoire. Also, not gonna lie, it was great to walk into the choir room with no penguin gait, to walk in there strong and greet all the regulars and have people notice enough to remark on how easily I moved. They said I was glowing. I honestly think I project a different energy now that I'm not in constant, debilitating pain. I sometimes see people who move the way I used to move, with that telltale dip to one side, the grimace pulled in before it can surface, their spirits braced, their auras raincloud gray with the continual labor of just keeping on. I just want to hold and soothe them and deliver them to my surgeon so he can make them whole. I still can't believe I spent so many years in that state of painfully impaired mobility when there was not just an alternative, but an actual cure. I still have arthritic pains here and there throughout my body some days, nothing unbearable really, and not constant and piercing the way the hip joint was. But now, the one place in my body that never hurts is that left hip. I'm starting to sound like an evangelist. I see why the surgery is called life-changing. Anyway, it was good to be back in the choir room, seeing all my fellow oldsters, starting to learn new music, a human collective making a joyful noise.