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A Few Sour Notes
You know how it is before you have children, when your mindset is one
of flowers and fairies that frolic in a land where all babies are
beautiful and sing with the voices of angels?
As an aside, I have always wanted to print a bumper sticker that reads: Parenting. Where fantasy and reality collide. I would make MILLIONS.
Anyway, one (or more) wee ones arrive, and then you slowly let go of -- or have stomped to smithereens -- the belief that all children are gorgeous, because, honestly, some simply are NOT, although we all like to pretend that
they are.
But I really and truly believed, with all of my tiny black heart, that children can sing with, well, maybe not the voices of ANGELS but with something close. Something pretty. Can you hear the reality vs. fantasy collision yet? It is loud. And it is out of tune. I'll just say it straight out: Flipper cannot sing. Or, rather, she CAN sing but wow. It .... hurts.
The poor thing can't carry a tune from here to the kitchen. Blessedly, she sings very, very quietly (so far) but there is nothing melodic, nothing harmonious about the notes flowing forth, nothing remotely resembling music at all. I remember singing all the time at her age; idiotic, redundant songs learned in kindergarten, or Christmas carols 6 months before and after Christmas (why, yes, that would make it year-round), but she -- thank God -- hasn't done much singing yet. For a while there, I missed it. I would hear little snippets of songs from the backseat, but never loud enough to really hear, until recently. Now, she is cutting loose. Letting it fly. Singing her little heart
out. And so, one more dream gets squashed: this kid will never be onstage at the Metropolitan Opera, channeling Beverly Sills, or, really just about any ten million people that can really sing. No, she'll be in the back seat of my car somewhere, happily warbling away, while her black-hearted Mommy drives along, teeth gritted, and the radio on.
Loudly.
Leigh appears Fridays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh on her blog Flipper and Me.
Leigh Sparacino
Leigh is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Monday.
Leigh grew up in Durham, attended college in North Carolina, left the area for an island off the coast of Georgia, the high mountains of Colorado, and her favorite mountains in western North Carolina, before returning to the Triangle eight years ago. She lives near Carrboro with her 4.5-year-old daughter Flipper and two dogs. She is single in marital status only, surrounded by friends, family, and her daughter's very involved and loving father. She works part-time and tries to be as involved as possible in her daughter's school, The Emerson Waldorf School, where Flipper is a kindergartner. She likes wood, glass and other natural materials for toys, loves the principles of Waldorf education and hates plastic. She might be the only person in the world with no TV and who hasn't been to a movie in 15 years, but races to the mailbox every Saturday for the most recent issue of People magazine. In other words, a contradiction. Or just human.
Leigh appears Fridays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh on her blog Flipper and Me.
Comments
Well, let me come out of my Seussical, the Musical obsession and over-volunteerism for just a minute and tell you that the tech crew kids are REALLY cool and they don't have to sing! So there's still hope that she can be involved in Drama...in addition to the lower case drama that is expected.