Girl with horn

The cleaning kit finally arrived and, finding myself with a pocket of time, I plunged Dad's coronet into hot bath water. We used to get into all sorts of trouble for playing these things when we found them in the basement. Now, it's MINE! I pull apart the one valve and yank out the tuning slide. Snaking the cleaner through pipes I watched as dark green clouds of old filth billow out. The valve is still missing a spring so it won't work to shift the key. This instrument is caked with slide grease and valve oil that have gone sticky and picked up basement gunk. The surface is dull and just looks like neglect. Soap. never had to soap a horn before but this needs it.

Then, it's time to put it together. At first I wonder if the horn is still dirty inside as it's tough to get air through. Then, I realize it might be my lungs that are out of shape. I figure out its intervals and briefly contemplate waking my party animal neighbors with a reveille at 5 am after their next late night fete.

As I take a cloth and polish the sediment off its surface a lovely silvery horn emerges. Like loosing the genie from the lamp I know I'm not alone in the room. Dad smiles over my shoulder. The brighter the horn shines the more clearly I can see his face. I put the new mouthpiece in and make sounds, experimenting with the few bugle calls I remember, and he plugs his ethereal ears.

After a few shots, my breathing comes back, my mouth remembers its "oo" arbrasure and the sound gets clear. "Next time you go home," he whispers "find my trumpet."