One Love, One Lifetime
by Dorothy Barth
Copyright 1997The chance to make music together never fails to inspire us. We are up early on our one precious weekend day together, ready for our next musical adventure.
Today's destination will be a hidden winery a half hour's drive to the south of our little hamlet of Fallbrook, the world's avocado-growing capital. I had discovered its whereabouts while reading a local wedding magazine and in ever-optimistic fashion guessed it might be another perfect venue for our Renaissance recorder music.
Almost missing our left turn, we are struck by how unobtrusive this property is, right in the middle of a tree-lined residential neighborhood. 'San Diego's Oldest Operating Vineyard and Winery, Founded 1889,' announces the sign at the entrance, and suddenly we find ourselves in the old West. 'Welcome,' greets another old wood sign, leading us in either of two directions.
To the right the road curves to offer picturesque art galleries, crockery and clothing stores, a tasting room, and a rustic, hideaway restaurant. To the left stretches a covered pavilion and picnic area marked, without exhortation, "For Private Events Only." Its weathered fir structure displays on every available surface rusted tools, tack, license plates, and turn-of-the century winery equipment, which happily combines with olive trees, ferns, cacti, honeysuckle, Bougainvillea, and countless white butterflies. A family of daisies smiles from an appropriately rusted bowl. Plants and burning logs are at home in old wagon parts. At the far end of the picnic area the drip drip of water falling in a well leads to an old windmill identifying itself with the ancient sign, The Aermotor Chicago. Beyond that lies the vineyard itself and then our destination, the wedding lawn. A rose-studded grape arbor gazebo beckons at the far end.Our musical alliance was born on our second date in September 1995--a picnic in the mountains of Santa Ysabel. Bert asked me to give him a recorder lesson, confident that he could learn this ancient instrument, having previously played saxophone and clarinet. He had since abandoned that quest in favor of becoming an avid listener and sometime classical music radio programmer--raw material for a precocious recorder student.
Six months later at our wedding we toasted our guests by playing Simple Gifts. Bert's Fallbrook home now became my home too. Though I had previously enjoyed playing in quartets and larger groups, our rural location suggested we cast our musical fate entirely with flutes of fancy.
We found special glee in bringing our recorders to life in exotic places. They awakened the fairies in California's coastal redwoods and in the rain forest of Stanley Park. They caused an uproar among the psittacine population of Vancouver's Bloedel Conservatory. They transfixed chipmunks and stellar jays in the Rockies and took center stage at the Red Rock Amphitheater, a place with such wondrous acoustics that I considered convincing Bert to move to Colorado. On our honeymoon, an airy Catholic Church in Lawai and a Zen Monastery near Hanapepe bore witness to our early music. We tossed our semi-quavers precipitously off the palis in Waimea Canyon. We even managed to sneak in our wedding duet while touring the Fern Grotto.Back home, we we began to perform at wedding ceremonies and continued to search for enchanted spaces. On Christmas day we played our Renaissance Ave Marias in a small mountain church in Santa Ysabel, site of our fateful second date. We ended our carols for the year underneath Balboa's Park's majestic Spanish arcades at Casa Del Prado.
There were other magic places. The Walled Garden and Victorian Gazebo of Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas. The bright red pagoda in Riverside, where we pitched bright red music stands. An empty alcove in San Juan Capistrano (home of summer swallows), where the proprietor of the occupied antique shop next door bribed us with bottles of spring water to move our concert to her storefront. The Greek Amphitheater at Point Loma College, where our Bach duets floated over the Pacific shoreline. And a historic temple in Heritage Park which produces within its simple wooden structure the most resonant acoustics we have heard.Gazebos especially attract us. Peaceful and evocative, they offer just the amount of echo recorders and their players love. The rose-covered gazebo at the Bernardo Winery is today's discovery. Quietly we enter this sanctuary, ignoring the lengthy stream of ants that share the ledge with our instruments.
We begin playing, shyly at first, but quickly losing that hesitancy in the synergy of making music. We open a book of fifteenth century Italian duets. "Good choice for this winery," says Bert, ever a purist when it comes to selecting repertory.
Now we are wishing for an audience, but none appear. Too hot to entice the shoppers. Through the latticework of the gazebo, I notice some folks are lingering. Surely to hear our Renaissance musings, I wonder.
As we begin our sixth and last Gastoldi duet, a young couple sits down in the grass in front of us. They look fresh-faced and happy, pleased, perhaps, to have made their own musical discovery. "Nice music", they offer respectfully.
My intuition guides me to a furtive suggestion: "Let's play 'All I Ask of You' from Phantom." Bert knows by now not to cross me when I have an urge to play a certain song. Even when it's not Renaissance. This song tugs at me particularly. I first heard it in sad times, but it became even more meaningful in good times, the times after I met Bert. It is a song to sing or play from the heart. Wishing I could sing the words, "Say, you'll stay with me, one love, one lifetime," I begin ornamenting the melody ever more elaborately on my rosewood soprano.
As we approach the second refrain, we notice activity in the grass. The couple has risen, are jumping up and down and hugging. When we finish the song and turn our gaze, we notice that the statuesque blonde with the upswept hair is clutching in her hand a small box.
A mysterious sprinkler suddenly ignites, and we pack our instruments. The exuberant couple is still hugging. Then the recipient of the small box can bear to keep her secret no longer. "He just proposed," she elates."
"I was going to give her the ring some time today, explains her new fiancée, "but when you played that song, I knew this was the moment."
We congratulate them, as struck as they are by the wonder of this occasion. "We could play it at your wedding," I offer and proudly produce our rose-gilded card. Magical ceremony music, it states.
Although I am not the bride-to-be, I know this event calls for celebration. We turn into the vineyard’s restaurant and for the next hour relish a wine lover's cheese plate, swept away by the moment as we were three years ago and thrilled to be the catalysts to another couple's beginning.