Today’Adventure: I attend a rehab ‘Music Jam.’
Jam Fact: I cannot play the piano but it’s not for the want of trying.
On day 14 of my ‘5 star accommodation stay’ I attended my first music therapy session. The idea of the ‘music jam’ was to make one feel better.
Claire, the lovely young guitar playing musician and her beautiful female eye seeing dog Willow, conducted the session.
Claire has a gorgeous, clear, easy on the ear voice and whilst she plays and sings, Willow sleeps peacefully on the floor beside her until the last song of the session ‘Until We Meet Again’ is played and then she stands up and ‘helps’ Claire pack up all the instruments etc. It was such a heart warming thing to see and I certainly exited that first session feeling a whole lot better, as the rehab therapist predicted I would.
On day 18, I again attended a ‘music jam’ session [the room overlooked the lovely suburb of Mt Lawley, with a splendid view across the Swan River to the Mataranka Bridge and then on and around to the best Stadium in Australia … Optus]
The session commenced with all present being issued a song book, together with a musical instrument of our choice and then everyone was invited to pick a favourite song of theirs for us all to sing along to. I was ‘harmonising’ along to ‘Que Sera, Sera’ plus banging the music shaker on my knee … missing quite a few of the high notes I must admit and probably not quite keeping in time to the beat with the shaker when all of a sudden Willow got up from her place by Claire’s side and headed straight for me, looked at me searchingly with her beautiful, big, dark black eyes then turned and plonked herself on my foot which was hanging over the edge of my wheelchair. To make sure she stayed in direct contact with me, she proceeded to push back against my red and white, stay safe spotted socked foot and just lay there for the remainder of the session, until we all launched into a sterling rendition of ‘Until We Meet Again’, when she faithfully returned to Claire’s side.
It was a pretty special moment and I felt overwhelmingly good – until of course we all laughed and said why me? Obviously Willow in a not too subtle way was telling me that I was definitely missing a few notes and to maybe even tone down my enthusiasm a wee bit! Whatever, I just loved her re action to me.
I wanted to make contact with her but protocol of course is that you shouldn’t touch an eye seeing dog if they are working which she technically was, so Claire gave me permission to snap a photo instead – Willow of course did not blink an eye. Apparently that was a never been done before occurrence, so not only was I feeling pretty good that the dog had made contact with me but also because those moments in time are indeed something to not only lift one’s spirits but to also remind us that it’s often the littlest pleasures in life that bring us the greatest joy… and Willow certainly brought some much needed joy to this little UNYOUNG JAM’S life during that ‘music jam’ session.
Until next time – I say sing to your heart’s content… even if it is off key!
