The night when we finally faced the music

You may recall that I had a concert in the offing recently, one which my best friend and I had dreamed up over a late-summer bottle of wine and which, to our amazement, seemed poised to become reality.
We had been quite giddy with joy when a date and venue were secured weeks in advance with all but two of our fellow members of a choir that disbanded seven years ago, and had made heady promises to ourselves and each other about preparing our voices for the momentous occasion, neither of us having sung seriously for the past two years (unless you count late-night karaoke sessions - and perhaps we shouldn't).
Of course, life got in the way, and our best intentions dwindled into dust as the weeks passed. With a fortnight remaining, our resolve suddenly hardened, and we agreed on a practice session at the church one weekday evening. Alas, that very day, my friend was beset by a health issue that laid her low. Unable to meet with her, I contented myself with locating the music we had proposed as potential programme fillers, slightly balking as I reacquainted myself with the challenge that certain pieces presented, pervaded as I was with a creeping doubt that we could rise to the occasion.
Despite various setbacks, my friend and I managed to reschedule our get-together, and I toddled round to her place one evening to hash things out. Suffice it to say that things went nowhere near as well as we hoped: our voices felt tight and strained, our stamina was shot to bits, and the music proved far more demanding than we remembered. Faced with a few short days until go time we made rapid changes to the concert’s content, excluding some pieces, switching others, and generally wondering what on earth we had thought we were doing all those weeks before.
We fired off a hasty group email with the proposed amendments to the seven other singers; predictably, some of them expressed dismay at certain exclusions, and we duly - if initially reluctantly - made reinstatements. The final details were circulated; all that remained was to await the fateful day.
My elder son, who is completing a two year college course in performing arts, had listened with compassion to my pitiful plea for advice on reconditioning my vocal cords in the limited time available. He provided a list of breathing and voice exercises, but also impressed upon me the importance of staying hydrated the day preceding and the day of the concert.
I am the first to admit I don’t drink enough water, and I knew it would prove a tricky pursuit; nevertheless, I started that Friday with the best of intentions, determined not to let the choir, the audience, and myself down over such a resolvable concern, and forcing myself to sup two mugs of water around Miss Pup’s early morning walk. However, by the time I was settled at my work desk for the busiest day of the week, I had largely forgotten about the need for consistent imbibing, which led to panic-stricken gulping of quantities of water at irregular periods.
The evening brought little improvement, with grocery shopping and my young son’s Scouts Carol Service dominating my time and edging any fluid-intake monitoring out of my thoughts. I was, however, assuredly more hydrated than usual - the natural side-effects of which state proved decidedly inconvenient, on occasion.
The following morning - thankfully well-rested - I arose and devoted a happy hour to Miss Pup's beach frolics, then turned my attention to the event on the horizon. By this time, my nerves were beginning to fray as I contemplated how harrowing it would be were the concert to be an unmitigated disaster; still, the hour was nigh: time to face the music.
My husband chauffeured my friend and I to church, where other choir members, to our simultaneous joy and consternation, were already prematurely gathering for a practice period (we had hoped for a few minutes of solitude to compose ourselves and bang out some wobbly notes).
Once the joyful flurry of greetings was over, the chairs were in position, and the organ was plugged in, we raised our music and voices and began - and the years fell away.
At the concert that evening, our performance was far from flawless, but the audience was generous, and we yielded (with a rather unflatteringly unprofessional lack of aplomb) to requests for an encore. Before taking our final leave from each other, we exchanged hugs amidst a plethora of promises that we would unite again for another concert. I just hope we don’t have to wait another seven years.