My Baby Is Back! (Harp and Harpmobile Stories)

On Friday I drove down to Lyon & Healy to pick up my harp.  Newly repaired is she, restrung with new strings, dusted, and clean and sparkly.  The surgery was a complete success, and the buzz is gone! She sounds lovely.  I am always nervous driving home on the expressway from Chicago with a harp in the back of the van.  I deliberately stayed behind a slow-moving truck, so anyone else behind me would tire of going slow and change lanes, thus decreasing the chance of someone rear-ending me and the harp.

Her re-entry into our home, however, was a little punch-drunk.  Perhaps she was still under the effects of the anesthesia from her recent surgery?  The men at Lyon & Healy had loaded her into my van (the "Harpmobile"), but I rely on Paul to get her into the house.  Paul was a little distracted with a work call, and we had to get the harp unloaded quickly so I could move the van from the driveway. (We hired landscapers to come; our garden has been entirely neglected this summer.  They came to tidy it up and needed to access the driveway.) So Paul was not exactly on his harp-moving game.  At one point, the harp shifted on her dolly and half tipped over, the dolly strap a thin line staving off disaster.  In the house, she tumbled forward while still on the dolly, rolling off-balance, but saved from a second disaster from stacked cardboard storage boxes that happened to be right there and caught her fall (she was encased in her squishy harp gear which prevented any scratches and also cushioned her tippage).  My screams during both of these almost-disasters were probably heard in Peru.

I unwrapped her from her cushion-covers.  Thankfully she suffered no injury from her tipping overs. I played for a long time, enjoying her refreshed sound.  I'm so glad to have her home!

Beauty - her repaired mechanism

A view from the Harpmobile.  

Our van works very well: the way back seats fold down into the floor, 

and Paul removes one mid-back seat, allowing the top of the harp to extend forward.

View from the back, showing how the whole instrument fits.  

This was an important consideration when we purchased the van.