Concert

L. and I don't yet have the local babysitters on speed dial - frankly, the few quiet hours between Cleo's bed time and our own weary laying down are often so pleasantly simple that we don't even think of trying to Go Out. But when I recently won a pair of tickets to yesterday's Peabody Institute concert from WBJC, it was too much to resist. Get out your best blouse, wife: we're hitting the town.

For at least a couple of hours, in any event. After getting a sitter set up in the living room, we drove downtown, and were slightly stunned to see people out and about, as though they thought that it was totally normal to eat at a restaurant, or to emerge from the house after 7 p.m. I felt slightly like a World War II-era G.I. must have felt, when he returned from the Pacific to his Akron family home: Yes, I vaguely remember such a life, but it seems so far away now.

But that doesn't mean that we'd forgotten how to enjoy it! Jackets off, programs in hand, and now the perfomers ambled onto the stage: four piece by Francis Poulenc, a French composer who moved for a time in the same circles as Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. I'd never heard of him, but who cares? The pianist played with grace, we both had a crush on the bassoon, and the oboe, as it sparkled, looked like a jeweled find in King Tut's tomb. And the second movement of each of the first two pieces was lovely: a quiet duet between restrained voices.

There were four pieces, in all, but I'm afraid that I can't report on the second two: like schoolkids giddy with the advent of spring, we made a break for the doors at Intermission -oh, but don't be too angry, WBJC, for we really did appreciate the tickets! - and each ordered a drink at a local restaurant. A cider and a beer: nothing exotic, but made the more delicious by the knowledge that Cleo was asleep six miles to the north, and that it was not, after all, impossible to combine this world and that. Did Cleo know that her parents had closed their eyes and thought, for a few moments, of nothing but music? No - and neither did the bassoonist know that occasionally two of his listeners were momentarily distracted by thoughts of Cleo, back home. But even if the two spheres were thus distinct, they made for a happy combination last night.