A special Anniversary gift

Over 20 years ago, Tom asked me to marry him.  We met in January of 1995 in the men's locker room, were great friends first, started dating in March, he met my family in April, we talked about marriage sometime in May, I met his parents over Memorial Day, and he finally asked me in August of 1995.  My grandmother provided her engagement ring from her first marriage.  Tom told me that since he got the engagement ring for free, he'd buy me a viola.  Over the years, I kind of forgot.

Fast forward 20 years to Christmas day, because Tom can't wait 4 more days until our 20th anniversary.


I cried.

Yes, I do play.  Yes, I started playing in junior high, continued in high school, stopped in college and through marriage and having many of my children, started again in the fall of 2011 when we moved here and we played in a Thanksgiving multi-denominational performance of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" and other numbers.   To do so I borrowed my wonderful sister in law's viola.  I still have it.  It was so great to be playing again.

I was also 6 months pregnant for that performance, haha.

Fast forward to fall of 2013, when we prepared The Many Moods of Christmas cantata by Robert Bennet and Robert Shaw.  Also difficult.  It was also fantastic.  I was also 8 months pregnant with Virginia, haha.  We performed it again in 2014 and just a few weeks ago in 2015.

This poor viola, though.  It's brand new so it needs TLC as I warm it up to playing, tuning, etc.  Withing moments of opening it the D string broke (kind of important, like the A string on a violin...).  We ordered a new set of strings.  The package came on Monday.  The envelope looked like it had never been sealed, haha, so, no strings were left in the package.  They are replacing them and they should arrive today, the 30th.  Here's hoping!