Zing went the strings…

It’s been 21 years since Lisa and I got married. We had a modest wedding: one bridesmaid, one groomsman, a few potted plants instead of flowers. But we wanted the music to be special. Lisa’s brother and niece sang a duet, accompanied by my sister. I wrote a song and sang it to Lisa. But what about the processional? We decided to hire a harpist. I contacted someone at UT and made the arrangements a couple months before the wedding. Two weeks before the big day, I checked in with the harpist. He said he couldn’t make it after all, but he’d enlisted another harpist from UT to play. Okay.
Just a few days before the wedding, harpist number two got a better offer, but he assured me that he’d passed the gig to a very talented young woman. On the day of our wedding, everything was ready. Every thing except one. No harpist. In the little room where I stood with my brother and my preacher daddy, I paced. I wasn’t nervous about getting married; I was nervous about having to hum the wedding march. Five minutes before start time, a breathless young woman hurried down the aisle, lugging her harp. She was apologetic, saying she’d gotten lost. I calmed myself down and we strolled out to the front of the church. The wedding march began and it sounded classy and different from the usual organ rendition. My beautiful bride started down the aisle with her father. The processional was about six notes from the end when the harpist hit a chord which had never been played before…not anywhere, not any time. She stopped, adjusted her fingers and hit the chord again. It was worse. She hit it a third time and decided that was as close as she was gonna get, then finished the last two bars. That was when I quit believing that the harp was a heavenly instrument.
It was one sour note on an otherwise-beautiful day. Although I obviously still recall the incident, it’s now more amusing than annoying. And I’ve found that, when it comes to a marriage or any other sort of relationship, you can dwell on the one bad note or you can delight in the beauty of the overall song, the excitement of another day, the celebration of love. Yes, there’ll be an occasional clinker. But you’ll feel much better if you quit harpin’ on ‘em.