Singing with Mom

I’m not sure when Mom started playing the guitar. Before I came along, that’s for sure. Her parents weren’t particularly musically inclined, I don’t think. I’d guess it was in college.

I remember singing a lot as a family. Not the performance kind of singing, in front of the church or other group, although that happened sometimes, but just-a-part-of-the-day singing. What I’d learn later was folk music. We sang the blessing before dinner. We sang in the car on longish trips. Mom & Dad would take my brother and I to song circles where people would congregate for an afternoon or evening – in a house, in the Gnu Deli restaurant in Eau Claire where a cold bottle of sarsaparilla was a favorite fizzy treat, or around a campfire – some would bring instruments, and some just their voices. We’d sing songs we knew, and learned songs we didn’t. We’d sing in rounds or choruses. Sometimes only a few would know the song, and the rest would listen, tapping their foot, maybe shaking maracas in time. Some, like mom, were good enough to pick up the chorus after a verse or two, and suddenly what was a one or two person melody would blossom into melody and harmony and would grow to include us all.

Mom always wrote music, too. I thought almost all the songs we sang together were ones that she wrote. I even told my kindergarten class in that matter-of-fact voice of a know–it-all child that my mom wrote the song (a girl scout camp favorite) “The other day… I met a bear… a great big bear… a way out there…” I was perplexed to find out later from her that she hadn’t. There were good times – hearing my dad’s bass rumble from the driver’s seat mix with mom’s alto, or at home with dad on the auto-harp and mom playing the guitar.

I spent my pre-teen and teen years disliking everything that Mom liked. It’s practically required of teenage girls that resemble their mothers. I rolled my eyes at folk music – hid in my room during song circles.

Now, some 20 years later, I tried to show some interest and pride in my mom’s hobby. It occurred to me during our weekly phone conversations that while I wish my parents would take an interest in my athletic hobbies – even though they never really have in the past – that I was just as disconnected from my mom’s musical pursuits. And then she told me in passing about the CD she was in the process of recording.

This time, I waded into the conversation, and asked about the songs she was including. After getting over no small amount of startlement, she told me of her plans for gathering a chorus for a few songs, and a friend with a violin for another, and working up one last song to be included. “You know,” she said, “I have about 180 songs. My voice isn’t getting any younger. I should really do a Christmas album too.”

How did she write 180 songs, and I had no clue? How many of those songs would I recognize as hers? Probably about 30. She never mentions the writing of these in her annual Christmas poem. She doesn’t mention them in our weekly phone conversations. I do hope that she shares her struggles and triumphs with tempos, chords and lyrics with her singing buddies.

So when she mentioned a few weeks later that she wasn’t sure who to ask to sing in the chorus with her on a song, I took a deep breath – and volunteered. “Well, Mom, if you have troubles getting a bunch of people, I could fly up and sing with you. No pressure,” here I was half hoping she would not find this appealing, “I don’t NEED to, but if you want… if it would help…”

It took no small amount of finagling our schedules – around hay fever season, her sore shoulder, my training – but last weekend I went up.

And we sang together.