time for another post, by God. tonight it's...

Grapevine!

my final jamboree was tonight. for those of you (there are *some*, right?) who aren't at swarthmore, jamboree is a once-a-semester a cappella concert featuring a few songs, always brand new ones, from every group on campus. this evening was, and i think pretty much everyone who could judge will agree, the best jambo grapevine has had since i've been at swarthmore.

see, it's a fairy tale. i love to sing. i want to sing more than anything. i don't make mixed company. so, my freshman spring, i audition for grapevine despite the fact that, having heard them in concert the previous semester, i'm aware that they're...not the best group on campus. and my life is changed forever. i think i mean that.

i even remember what i was wearing -- gray pants, black sweater, black ribbon in my ponytail -- and the fact that i'd just been yelled at at work. jenny had to come and find me when it was my turn to sing, because i was in a practice room crying. i sang, shakily, "your daddy's son" from _ragtime_, and i watched abigail's mouth incredibly closely when she told me to follow her vowels trying to blend on landslide. and they were nice to me, unlike another group to which i have some allegiance.

i made the group, entering with alyssa that spring. i was terrified of abigail and lindsay and keetje and sasha. i was in awe of noelle. i didn't know jenny and alyssa well. that changed...

i didn't realize how lucky i was to sing a solo my first semester. it was -- and is -- "as cool as i am" by dar williams, still one of my favorite songs to sing. and i got to sing harmony with abigail on "take my breath away." and that jambo, despite lack of pitch, is still a great memory.

my choir experience and lindsay's health made me musical director -- not a job one expects during her second semester with the group. i gulped (and cried a lot at first) and did my best, and grapevine suddenly became my baby. that second year is still with me in fragments and stories. we shut the door on sarah's audition and keetje gasped out "she's like a little sporty bunny!" and we dissolved into laughter. justene and sarah and jenny were magical additions to the group. we instituted wine nights, and everyone came. we went to brown, discovered that jenny (jr.) was destined for the space navy, and got lost on the way back. in the spring, louisa returned and we recorded a twenty-track CD in abigail's uncle's living room, and then whipped the princeton footnotes at beirut on the balcony of an eating club. we were *better,* and we loved each other. jambo was fine, i guess; truth be told, i don't remember either of them that year. instead i remember collapsing in drunken giggles outside martin, trying to draw chalk outlines of abigail's crutch. oh, and the first time keetje kissed a girl, and the meteoric rise of my alcohol tolerance.

that summer five of us sang on the avenue of the americas in the west village, drawing admiring little groups and a lot of stares. i framed the picture from the italian restaurant that night, one of the happiest i can remember.

last year was big in a lot of ways. four new members in the fall: ai, lee, jessie, christine. sarah pimped us to sandals resort, and we went to jamaica, where i got the sunburn of a lifetime. jenny jr. became the new abigail -- in her own inimitable way. i was missing all my friends abroad, including jenny sr., and grapevine became my lifeline. they listened to everything i had to say and soothed my every frayed nerve. maria joined us in the spring and suddenly it could have been a mixed group, we could go so low. i will never forget watching the faces in the audience when we sang "winter" last spring. it was the moment that i knew we could be really...really really really...good.

and...now we are, i think, and only getting better. we smile with a new confidence, taking the stage. we glance around in appreciation of the perfect moments that are less and less rare in our music. right now my purple flowers and my book of goodbye notes from the grapes are sitting on my bed. next to my copy of our cd. a for-real cd! what a year.

the best part of all of this is looking back, thinking about our luck in getting the three '04 freshmen we did, way back when, and what a monumental change it was to hear 28 people and choose only two (amanda and alex, that is) this fall. or to think of trying to learn "rain" and then to remember that we learned "plenty." that's not *it,* of course...lots of groups get better. but this group is family, for most of us. these are people i might never have met if not for the group, and many are among my closest friends. the music is a huge part of that. it's difficult to describe, but the bonding that goes on between people who love to sing and sound good together...there is nothing like it. i can recall particular times we sang "ghost," or the bridge in "winter," or, tonight, the final chorus of "iris," and find, instead of a simple musical appreciation of those spectacular moments, a profound gratitude that i sing with the people i sing with.

or rather, that i sang with the people i sang with. there was a very tiny moment tonight, right between the end of "iris" with its ringing echo and the huge, screaming applause that followed, when i looked around at the other grapes and wished i could stay in that place forever. but then we walked off the stage.