The Healing Power Of The Ukulele

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​The Healing Power Of The Ukulele

      I've spent the past six-and-a-half weeks off my feet, housebound, with another week-and-a-half to go until I receive the verdict on whether or not my fractured first metatarsal, surrounded by the still slightly swollen landscape of my foot,

...has healed enough for me to return to the wonderful world of walking.          
       "I don't know if I could handle this as well as you've been doing," a friend recently said about my extended non-ambulatory condition. "How do you keep your spirits up?"
          To which I replied, "I play my ukulele."
          It's been five months since my trip to Hawaii where I semi-impulsively bought a ukulele and fell in love at first strum. (see post from 5/9/2023,   https://www.ailantha.com/blog/i-ukulelist​)

​        There's so much about the ukulele that I love: its sweet, bouncy, cheerful sound;  the smallness of it; the tingly pressure of the strings against my fingers.

      I love the hard work of conquering the chords. I love singing along with my playing.
​        I love the two ukulele groups I discovered and joined (and now greatly miss) here in Columbus, The Buckeye Ukulele Society,

...and the Licking County Ukulele Club. ​

     And those are just the things I love about the ukulele that I can verbalize.     
​    My sister jokes that the ukulele is my spirit instrument, but  I joke that it's my crack cocaine: once I start playing I can't stop. A half hour of practicing is nothing; an hour flies by. I get lost in it. I only know it's time to stop when my hands start aching.  Or when it's time to do something else.  Except, of course, these days there's not much else I can do. 
       And  yet these days, when I'm admittedly among the least productive of human beings, playing the ukulele somehow gives me a feeling of  productivity. Even if it's only music that I'm producing.

           And not that it's even good music yet, nor may ever be:  if I wished to be a virtuoso ukulelist (and they are out there - I've met a few right here in Columbus, Ohio) I probably should have started at least fifty years ago. 
           But I guess it doesn't matter.  While I wait - and hope - for time to heal my foot, my ukulele heals my spirit. 
           Funny that a small wooden box with  a wooden neck and four nylon strings could have such power.