Yesterday I took Mr. Noble out for lunch – a delicious lunch, as it turns out, at The Soup Depot. It doesn’t sound fancy- and it isn’t! – but the is food homemade and tasty and also free of the preservatives to which he tends to be allergic. So it filled the bill, and it gave us time to chat a bit about the weekend past and also about the task ahead of getting him moved out of his apartment. I tend to think of Moving Out in rather grand, overwhelming scale- which it has always been whenever I’ve moved anywhere. (Even as a bachelor, moving out of Shagbark, you would have thought I was a family of 12, so much stuff had I accumulated. And my pack rat ways have not been cured by marriage, I’m afraid. So for me to pack up my belongings and clean up after myself is an undertaking roughly akin to the dismantling of a World’s Fair, only without the paid workers! Moving Mr. Noble will not be nearly so daunting a task- and it certainly helps that he has lived simply over these last nine months. (The wild parties in his apartment have been quite infrequent, I’m told!) In fact, he professed to only be nervous about getting the microwave really cleaned up because it was lent to him by someone exceedingly fussy about such things. That someone is me, by the way. If I have influenced Mr. Noble in any way over the past year, it’s that he’s picked up on my affinity for the sarcastic comment.
After lunch we drove to Schulte Elementary just in time to pick Kathy up at the end of the school day, and it gave her a chance to show him her room. What drew his attention more than anything specifically in the room was her world map and the two of them spent I don’t know how much time poring over it. I think Mr. Noble was showing her two possible routes he might take in flying from the U.S. to Guam for a choral event he’s leading next month. Either way, it means a total of 28 hours in the air. I am exhausted just thinking about that! But here is Mr. Noble, fully prepared to do just that – and if not exactly relishing the prospect, he is fully resigned to it and willing to go. I think what makes the biggest difference is that There Is Music at the other end of that huge journey and people who are so tremendously thrilled that he’s coming. That’s probably enough to make such an arduous trip more than worth it. In a sense, that’s what this year at Carthage was for him as well. It didn’t mean 28 hours on an airplane – but it did mean uprooting himself, settling into a strange apartment and a completely unfamiliar community, for the purpose of standing in front of a choir consisting entirely of strangers. But it was a chance to make music – and I get the sense that Mr. Noble has always been willing to go wherever the music takes him, which is why he has flown all over the country and all over the world for such opportunities and experiences. And at the age of 85, even with all of the encroaching limitations of old age, he is still willing to go where the music is.
pictured: Kathy and Mr. Noble in front of the world map in her music room at Schulte Elementary.