Not like, "my roommate is getting married so I have to move to a different community" kind of moving, but "my roommate is getting married so I'm going back to where I last lived for the summer, then moving to the east coast because I haven't lived near my family for about ten years" kind of moving.
If any of you people live out east, you're probably like, "oh, cool, we get that awesome person back!" But to this Illinois girl, that is far as far.
The only thing about this whole leaving stuff that makes me feel like a dance party in the sunshine with the scent of Twizzlers wafting on the breeze is that it was an opportunity to throw him a surprise party.
Can you tell I really like parties?
I do.
My friend and party co-host, Ellen, and I had this in the works for weeks, and he had no idea.
When he walked through the door...pretty awesome. He said he'd never been so surprised in his life, even though he took it so completely in stride. He's also been the area youth symphony conductor for the last few years, so the guest list consisted of symphony people, and the first thing out of his mouth besides "oh, wow" was simply, "downbeat in five minutes guys, get tuned up."
Which confused me a little because he seemed surprised but he also was just cool and collected. However, he assured me several times he was indeed surprised, and he couldn't have asked for better.
Here, in pictures is the party (sorry about the quality, I took it on my little smart phone camera which can be pretty good but it's not an iPhone lol). Pinterest was invaluable, and Ellen and I had a lot of fun choosing themes and food options, exclaiming as we found a perfect option, "that's so David!" Noticing that there is a surprising lack of real music or musician-themed party ideas out on the internet (by real I mean not 1950s Elvis themed), I took pictures of what we did in case somebody else wanted to do the same thing.
So to start with, we had this cake. Ellen's friend did it, and it really did look like a stringed instrument. There were some proportion difficulties, but hey, I didn't even attempt it, so they get a lot of credit. It really was cool to have a shaped cake like that at the party! Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of it. So, moving on.
There is one thing that I think all of David's students know about him. He has a thing for coffee. He used to work at Starbucks, but he's also a gigging musician and private music teacher. Hint for those of you who want to take lessons and need to come up with nice gifts for your teachers or fellow musician friends: music people and Starbucks are really close friends. I don't necessarily know why, I have guesses, but regardless, David is no exception to the musician/coffee relationship and so when we found a recipe for MOCHA PUNCH on Pinterest it was pretty clear what we had to do. And then I labeled it. With a sign:
Mocha Punch
when I was making this sign my youngest brother came up behind me and said "I'll give *you* a mocha punch." then walked away, and I listened to him laughing all the way down the stairs.
And the card table. I had fun with the card table. This idea also came from Pinterest, the using the vintage music case for a card box. I had a perfect candidate knocking around. Because of the lining of this 1920s violin case card box, the color scheme took shape, the dark purple and green in addition to the black and white of sheet music, concert wear, and piano keys--pretty much the musician's life is black and white. With a few quick repairs, some more sign making, and some premade cards for the guests to write notes in case they forgot to write one at home, this table was almost complete. And then. My mom suggested balloons.
Balloons! Take an average table and add balloons and NOW it's a party. So the balloons really made a huge difference. Here's the card table set up:
A close up of the balloon weight. Old music books totally fit our theme of vintage-y musician, so I was glad I found them on our bookshelf.
Then from the top so you can see the balloons, too. The table didn't end up staying there, but you can kind of see what it looked like.
Then. This is another one of my favorite things that we did. Ellen, my other friend, Allie, my bro Elliot, and I, made bow tie napkin/fork packets. Actually, Ellen, Elliot and I made them. The glue dot things we used to make them lost their sticky so Allie and I fixed them. While a little messier, glue sticks definitely worked better. However, they were perfect considering musicians, especially male ones, do the bow tie thing. Another score for the musician theme!
One thing I did not anticipate was all the guys trying to wear them. Silly me.
Anyway, now that the party is over, I actually still feel like dancing. At the risk of waxing eloquent, it's just different dancing--instead of the sunshiny party with the aroma of licorice, I feel like I'm waltzing in the rain. The happy beats have melted into a ballad of memories, and everything looks kind of dreary. However. The wet earth smells like spring--like new beginnings--and soon, I know that the rain will move on. But I'm not rushing it. I am looking forward to a new dance party, but I wouldn't be able to enjoy the flowers of that party without the rain of this one.
So thank you, David. You told me once that you were just my music teacher. But you followed that by "don't think that because I'm 'just your music teacher' I'm not here to be more than that." Maybe it's a little silly to be this sad that you're going. But if the party last night didn't say it loudly enough, there are a lot of people who love you and are going to miss you. Because you have been so much more than that.
