Hm. I am Truly Stumped.

Daily writing prompt

If you could relive one day from your past, which day would it be and why?

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How ’bout just great days in general? Any one of them would suffice:

• The first day of seventh grade at Clifton. Mrs. Thompson put me in eighth grade band, which is why I had so many friends at HSPVA when I was a freshman. Like, half my band was already there. Anyway, the moment that sticks with me is our first warm-up note. The tuba section rattled my teeth because it was the very first time I’d been in a brass section with more than one.
• I would like to relive any day of my first vacation to Washington, DC when I was eight. I fell in love with the city and haven’t recovered. Even if I don’t live there anymore, we are currently having an affair. We argue about parking.
• I’d like to relive performances more than anything else:
  • St. Mark’s UMC
  • Summer Jazz Workshop
  • My appearance on “Black Voices,” a Houston tv show, with my big white face and huge glasses. I am grateful that I got to have a shining moment, but I felt like I was being Punk’d.
  • Houston Symphony
  • Bridgeport UCC
  • Belle Voci
  • Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (the highlight was singing soprano in Bach’s Mass in H mol. If I call it Mass in B Minor, some music nerd will correct me in the comments. To me, it is Mt. Everest, the Kick My Mass in B Minor
• Picking chesterberries with Dana for our brunch program at Biddy’s, not knowing anything that happens in the future
• One more minute of cooking with Kincaid would be enough, please dear God…..
• Any day with 16yo and 10yo
• Any day with Brian and Tiina, but particularly writing and swimming at the lake
• A do-over with Aada that’s perfect and not muddy. We were idiots from the beginning, and the crime is that we’re too smart for it. I hope that one day we’ll get that picnic in the sunshine without having to be anything other than the glorious messes we are. If nothing else, it is a nice thought.
• I can’t think of one day, but I wish I could relive the process of Virginia no longer feeling threatening to me and just feeling like “life.” I have a long, long history there and the threat is not a person- it’s what happens to a writer’s brain when memories rise from their graves. The thing about my written history with Aada being so long is that everywhere I look, there’s a line one of us has written. I don’t enjoy being in that headspace. Brian and Tiina were able to rewrite history for me so that walking around their area was making something new and not, in fact, making the mummies dance. I got to soften a great deal, because nothing was ever about me. I was just along for the ride, learning to forget old patterns because I’d been given new choreography. Everything said stable, probably even for the long haul. But I cannot have fear around what I do, and that was a dealbreaker. My blog is painful when my life is painful, and I have to change things from the inside out. What I will miss is capturing slices of daily life there, but it’s just not my turf anymore, as if it ever was.
• Any day with the Borums out on the farm in Newburg, followed by a trip to a tasting room in the vineyards of Lafayette.
• The entire weekend with the youth group at Bridgeport when we went to Camp Westwind. It was beautiful, but I wish that it had been nice enough weather to play in the water.
• Any Sunday in which my dad was preaching.
• Any Sunday in which my mother was playing the piano.
• Any Sunday in which I was preaching…. No, wait. Some of it was great. Some of it was a disaster. I cannot remember which Sunday was which, so I should probably be more specific.
• My first date with Sam. It’s been years and the relationship did not last, but I would like to remember the feeling of “I am not dead inside like I thought.”
• Any date with Zac, because they were all creative and wonderful.
• Going to the Charlotte Cardin concert at Union stage
• Meeting Peter Paige at Capital Pride in 2002
• Going with my dad to Rockefeller’s to hear Maynard Ferguson, Dizzy Gillespie, then Maynard again. Later on, going with my dad to see Terrence Blanchard.
• My mom accompanying me in church or at school contests.
• My niece and nephews being born- I wasn’t in town for any of them.
• My first day in Silver Spring. I took pictures like a grinning idiot tourist even though I was just riding on the Metro from the airport. It was a fundamental shift that Maryland was home. I speak Old Bay.