Singing Solo
music from my childhood
Even now I couldn’t tell you the singer or the name of the piece of music. Nonetheless, music springs from my mind or the words from my lips. I don’t remember most lyrics so I make up words as melody unfolds. I can’t carry a tune so that anyone listening might recognize the piece, so there’s not much help there either.
I don’t understand why. My mother’s Heintzman piano sat in our large front hall below the staircase that ended in a long platform we children used as a stage for song and dance at our family Christmas concerts. Mom would occasionally sit to play and sing aloud to her sheet music, from her youth, the great band era. She had a great repertoire of playable pieces from memory too which added to our familiarity with hymns and Christmas carols.
Our weekly Sunday drives following some country road, ‘to see where it went’ my Dad would say when asked, ‘where’re we going?’. When the drive got boring and we grew restless in the back of beyond, my mother would cue a song and we’d all join in. I didn’t know how badly I sang until the nun directing the children’s choir told me one day to just move my lips and not sing out loud.
A few Christmases ago, we were invited to a colleague’s home for her annual Christmas singalong, where I sang with gusto. It so reminded me of Christmases long ago before our piano got sold. She said to me as we were leaving, she hadn’t known I was such an enthusiastic singer. Her comment puzzled me, as did another’s in church at a funeral for a religious person. The familiar hymns I hadn’t heard again since my early years when latin was used in the church. At one point in the liturgy, you turn to your neighbours and make a sign of peace, when I met the inquiring look of a woman sitting behind me. At the end of the service, she touched my sleeve as we left the pew, and thanked me for singing.
I suppose I might have taken singing lessons looking back, but that hasn’t happened so far. I still sing aloud from time to time, and sometimes with gusto. I am no better remembering words of some old songs, but the musicals I like, I say the words or sing them badly – great fun for me. My sister said, I should sing solos, ‘so low, no one can hear!’ Bitch.