Over the past six months or so, my sleeping-waking schedule has changed. I’ve found myself staying up late (11:30 pm or after) binge-watching my favorite TV shows on Acorn TV: Doc Martin, 800 Words, Foyle’s War, A Place to Call Home, Midsomer’s Murders and lately, Where the Heart is.

Since I usually don’t have appointments until the afternoon, I have taken my sweet time to wake up, go for a two mile walk, eat breakfast, do the daily crossword and sudoku, and work on my Spanish.

By 10:00, I’m ready to get into the shower and proceed with the rest of the day, organ lessons or other appointments.

Ah, the life of retirement!

Not so today. At 6:15 am, I thought I heard my phone send out a text alert. It was Chandra Peters from Punahou Chapel, wondering if I was available to play two chapel services this morning, because their organist was sick.

Since it was raining, and the traffic was likely to be terrible, I had to get a move on. Because this is the weekend of the Punahou Carnival, parking on campus would be difficult so Chandra arranged to meet me at 7:20 am at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, across the street.

Miraculously it only took me 12 minutes to get through the school traffic and rainy conditions and I arrived at the church at 7:15, enough time to run in and grab some music for a prelude and postlude.

Because traffic was bad Chandra picked me up about 7:35 and dropped me close to the chapel entrance. I was relieved to see that my pistons were intact on Level 5 (for organ registration). I was brought the three hymns as loose, multiple page sheets and asked if I could borrow a three-ring binder since I had left the house without one. One of the hymns (On Eagle’s Wings) had six pages and I could just see the pages flying off the rack with the air conditioning vent just overhead! There was no time to practice any of my solo music or the hymns.

About two minutes before the start of the service I was handed a thick packet with the script of the student play. There were about twenty sections highlighted in blue indicating where they wanted me to improvise sound effects, walking music, uptempo sections contrasting with short fanfares and “nightmare music.” The classroom teacher instructed me to play only about two seconds of music for each interlude.

Talk about being put on the spot! As the play progressed I figured I only had about ten to fifteen seconds of dialogue before it was time to play the next little musical blip. What chords do you use to signify a scary nightmare? What do you play when the instruction is “TA DA!” Things I never learned in school!

Somehow I survived and everything worked out in the end. For the second chapel, the seniors sang Marty Haugen’s “Weave One Heart.” I realized about midway through the first verse that the three loose pages were out of order! Oh well, I’m a pretty good faker!

The life of an “on call” organist! Never a dull moment!