Morning crow and midnight owl.

There is a church in our town at the corner of Church Street. It’s a United Church of Canada church, not that the denomination really means anything to me, but the building itself has meant different things to me at different times. When my daughter was two years old, for example, I used to take here there on Tuesday and Thursday mornings so that she could participate in a play group organized by several other mothers of children around the same age. My daughter, whom I love more than life itself, was not a “normal” child in the sense that she did not necessarily do what the other children did. She was a bit of a loner and preferred to do her own thing, but I didn’t take her to the play group in the basement of the United Church at the corner of Church Street for her benefit. I did it for mine.

I was pregnant with Buddy Boy and I had no social life, and going out two mornings a week to meet with other mothers of small children was a wonderful thing. There was one morning in the winter when I had to bundle Little Princess up and she was being incredibly uncooperative, and I was pregnant and uncomfortable and Hubby, after watching me struggle with this situation for a while, finally asked, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you just didn’t go?” and I nearly burst into tears and said, “I’m not doing it for her, I’m doing it for me!”

Anyway, those days are long gone. More recently, the friendship hall, as these things are called, has been rented the first Friday in every month (except during the summer) by my writing group mentor Janice and her conjoint, a guitar playing carpenter, for a coffee house/concert venue, the only stipulation being that the music presented has to be acoustic (or mostly, I’ve actually seen a blue grass band there with an electric bass, but I guess that’s allowed), and it generally follows a folk/blue grass/country trend. Generally.

Anyway, I just got back from said Church Street Café where I heard two different sets, the main one a husband and wife team accompanied by another husband and wife team, warmed up by the first couple’s son who is now a performer in his own right. It was all very folky and sudsy, and reminded me of when I used to hang out at coffee houses during my own folksinger days. The hall was packed, literally packed, with townies and people from the region, and I sat with an elderly couple from Way’s Mills and a woman I know from choir, who happens to be the widow of the former pottery teacher at the college.

Usually when I go to these things, which is rarely because we have our own music department series on Friday nights and that conflicts with this series, I don’t know anyone there, but tonight I saw many I did know. I would say the average age of the audience was around 70. I may be wrong, it may have been younger, but not by much. It was fun, not great art, but definitely a night out and an attempt to socialize with real people.

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