Little Voices, Big Music (plus a perfect trip to the fair) (Babble)

My girls just had their big end of the season choir concert on Sunday and their final rehearsal for the season this week.  Aden’s been singing with the Milwaukee Children’s Choir for three years now, Mona for two.  They both have pretty voices that sound even prettier together.  They both sing to themselves around the house every day.

But this may have been their last concert with this choir.  Aden passed the audition necessary for her to qualify for the next choir level, but Mona is too young to move on yet.  If they sign up for next season Aden would be in a new group, and Mona would be on her own in the old one.  That makes each of them a little nervous, but the biggest problem is that as much as they like choir, they don’t like getting up and going to choir.  My kids love just being at home and doing their own projects or playing games or biking around the block.  They don’t like the hassle of having to be carted off to an activity.
I know exactly how they feel.  I have a terrible time tearing myself away from the kids after work to go to mandolin orchestra rehearsal, and subsequently I’m always late because I literally have to peel Quinn or Mona or all of them off me to leave so it takes me longer to get out the door without feeling like a bad mom.  (Luckily the mandolin orchestra is a forgiving group.)

I reminded my girls of how much they always enjoy choir once they get there, the same way I’m always happy to go play my mandola even though it’s hard to want to leave our home to do it.  But they are tired of the structure.  They love to sing, they like the people, but they don’t like uniforms, they don’t like standing for a long time or waiting for the other choir groups to finish singing at the concerts.  So we’ll see.  After a summer break they may change their minds, but I’m not going to push it.  I’m glad they’ve had the experience of performing on a stage in front of a large audience and being part of a polished show.  Aden has the option of being in the 4th-8th grade choir at her school next year and that may be a better fit for her, and maybe it’s time to sign Mona up for something new.  I think she’d really enjoy pottery.

So knowing it may be their last big choir event together I teared up more than usual at this concert.  Something about children singing can be so moving it’s hard to describe.  They are their most endearing selves when they sing, without any of the obnoxious messy bits that can be so frustrating.  Sort of like how perfect they seem when they are sleeping and you wonder how they could ever provoke you into yelling or needing a break from them.
The youngest choir sang first, and my favorite song was “Make New Friends” which they did as a round.  That had me crying enough that Quinn who was in my lap wanted to know what was wrong.  (I told him they were good tears, but he looked doubtful.)  They ended their set with a creative version of “This Old Man” that made everyone laugh.  I was impressed with how complicated some of the music they tackled this year was.

(Blurry photo from the dress rehearsal.  Mona is in the front row with her hands together looking the wrong way.  Aden’s two rows behind her to the right of that pole.)

In the second half of the program the more advanced choir sang two pieces composed by Paul Caldwell who was there to conduct them in person.  He talked movingly about a little girl who survived the genocide in Rwanda who inspired the pieces, and how he wanted to write a lullaby for refugees who had no one to sing to them.  If that doesn’t make you weepy nothing will.  All of it was beautiful, and frankly a nice show even if you didn’t have a kid of your own up on the stage to admire.

Also this last weekend we visited the little fair that sets up in a parking lot a couple of blocks from our home for a couple of days every year in May.  It’s small but flashy.  There’s a big slide and and tilt-a-whirl, a couple of stands where you can win prizes and spot where you can buy funnel cakes.  It’s the kind of event that can quickly turn from simple fun into nightmare with little kids.  The lights and the music and the rides and the cheap toys are so attractive for about twenty minutes, but it’s expensive and nauseating and wears kids out fast so we have to be careful not to go over that hump into disaster land.

That’s the beauty of it being within walking distance of home.  If you go all the way to someplace like the State Fair and pay for parking and admission, there is a lot of ground to cover, and it’s easy to overwhelm small kids past the point of it being any fun at all because you want to stay long enough to justify the trouble and expense.  But the weird little traveling fair?  We can go for ten minutes, walk home to use our own bathroom and eat dinner, and go back for funnel cake for dessert later.  So it was just enough fair, and it was great.

The only heart wrenching moment was when Mona wanted to win a toy frog.  There is a game called the Duck Pond, where you pay three dollars and you get to choose three plastic ducks.  On the bottom of each duck is a number, and whatever total the three ducks add up to determines which prize you get.  Mona won an odd floppy tiger thing the first time when just the two of us were visiting the fair.  Later that evening when we returned as a whole family, Aden won a similar floppy tiger and Quinn won a blue, very flammable looking dog.  Mona voiced her desire to try the Duck Pond game again because she was smitten with the stuffed frogs in one of the prize bins, but she didn’t beg or whine.  She seldom asks for anything and she was being so good I told her I would give her another three dollars to try again, but that she should know that the odds of her winning the toy she wanted were very small.  She accepted that and was very excited to try one more time, and promised not to complain if she didn’t win the frog.

Of course she didn’t draw the right numbers to win the frog, and she was so disappointed she burst into tears and buried her face against her dad.  He told her he was sorry, but that that was how the game worked.  She said she knew and tried not to cry.  She did not beg or complain.  Mona was not trying to manipulate anyone and she fully accepted that she got what she got, but the loss hit her hard and it was obvious her tears were genuine.

The Duck Pond lady simply handed her the frog.

I could have hugged the Duck Pond lady.  I know we essentially just payed three dollars for a toy that was probably worth a nickel and it didn’t really cost the fair anything to let Mona have that frog, but that woman must deal with endless numbers of kids who barter and beg for something different from what they won and occasional parents who aren’t much better, so I’m sure she normally stands firm.  But Mona’s sincere appreciation of that toy (which she has dragged to bed with her every night since) made bending the rules the better way to go and I’m glad she did it.

Aside from that brief bout of tears there was no downside to the fair.  The Dizzy Dragons made us dizzy.  The slide was slide-y.  The funnel cakes were as delicious as they were bad for us.

(Mona in the Dizzy Dragon)

And the added bonus was that on the second night of the fair, after the choir concert, Aden used her own money from her piggy bank.  I don’t mean bonus because I didn’t have to pay (although that was nice), I mean I got to see Aden at her best.  She doesn’t really have expenses at nine, and she doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to spend money she gets in her birthday cards, so she was excited to use some of it, and she used it on her siblings.  She bought Mona a ticket for the Dizzy Dragons so they could go on together, and she gave Quinn a ticket to ride the little car carousel.  Then she bought a funnel cake to take home for everyone to share.  I found that really touching.  Aden drives me up the wall when she drags her feet or doesn’t do her homework or pick up her stuff, but she’s one of the dearest people I know.

It’s so nice when something that is supposed to be fun actually is fun.  There are so many things that seem like a good idea until the reality of navigating them sets in.  So many outings with kids turn into adventures in using public toilets or futile exercises in compromise among siblings.  This year’s trip to the fair was perfect, frog tears and all.

(Side note:  This series of photos has me noticing Mona’s new trend of smiling with no upper lip.  I suppose it’s a step up from the old cute face pose, but I look forward to the return of that lip someday.)

Everybody Sing (Babble)

Since my daughter was about eighteen months old, I don’t think a single day of her life has gone by that she hasn’t sung.  That’s not hyperbole, she really sings every single day.  She’s always been able to sing on key, and she has a pretty voice and an excellent memory.  Music is part of who Aden is, not just something she does.  She makes up little recitative-like narration to her games, she comes up with jingles (there’s one she developed for the drive to the YMCA that is particularly catchy) and she loves to sing along with CD’s.  The natural thing was to sign her up for choir, and that’s been good so far.

Mona sings in the Milwaukee Children’s Choir along with her sister, even though when she started she was technically a bit young for it, but they let her in anyway as a kind of sibling preference deal.  She wants to be a part of whatever Aden’s doing, so I don’t think she would do choir of her own accord, but I’m glad she’s involved.  She has a sweet, little girl’s voice, and when combined with Aden’s the sound is one of the most beautiful things I know.  When Mona was small she used to only sing along with the instrumental portions of the CD’s we listened to in the car which was weird and amusing and very interesting.  Like her sister, she often sings as she plays by herself.


Quinn is chatty more than he’s musical, but he can carry a tune well.   He does like to belt out a song as we ride in the car.  The favorite for most of this summer was Belinda Carlisle, Heaven is a Place on Earth.  (He really puts a lot of heart into the line “I’m not afraid—anymore!”)  We got that on a CD that came in a kids’ meal from Wendy’s and it was in heavy rotation for months.  (Another song on that disc is Somebody’s Watching Me by Rockwell, and I once spent an amusing evening lying in my bed listening to my kids down the hall debating about the lyrics.  There’s a line about the IRS, which Aden was hearing as the ARS, and she and Mona were coming up with theories about what that could be and why it was supposed to be funny that the singer was worried about it.  Quinn is like a little echo machine and he repeated both parts of that conversation as it was happening.  Eventually I told them it was the agency that collects our taxes, but they still weren’t sure about the joke.)  In any case, there are only four songs on that CD but it was like a little 80’s revival every time we got in the minivan.  The other big favorite this year has been the Here Comes Science CD by They Might Be Giants.  My personal favorite on that disc is their song Meet the Elements, but really all the tunes on that one are good.  It’s one of the few kids’ CD’s that I have on occasion put in when the kids weren’t even around.  I’m impressed that even my three year old can remember all those complicated lyrics.

But what I really wanted to touch on with this post is that there are many things–singing among them–that I’m glad my kids are still able to enjoy without being overly self-conscious.  Something about becoming an adult for many of us means feeling we are no longer qualified to participate in certain kinds of activities, and I think it’s a shame.  Often people hit a certain age and decide that they can’t draw, or dance, or sing, even though these are all things as kids they probably derived great joy from and didn’t worry what others thought.  I’m not saying that everyone has great untapped talent in these areas, I just don’t think you should deny yourself something fun because of some outside standard.  I talk to people in my music store all the time about how they would like to play the violin but that it’s probably “too late.”  Too late for what?  How many people started at the “right” age and did not become professional musicians?  You play because it’s fun and satisfying and a beautiful challenge.  There is no “too late” for that in my opinion.  People forget that drawing is fun.  A lot of people think that only people with some kind of magical gift can draw, but it’s skill based on work.  Talent is where you start, not an endpoint.  People with true genius have the added spark that transforms all that talent and hard work into art, but it’s still work.  (Brilliant people just make it look easy, but it isn’t.)

Watching my kids throw themselves into creative endeavors with great abandon is inspiring.  They like to sing loudly, they like to dance fast, and if they decide some toy animal would be better with wings they find spare materials lying around and just go ahead and make wings. But my girls are starting to hit ages where if the labels “singer,” “dancer,” or “artist” aren’t bestowed on them from an outside source, they are likely to doubt their abilities in those areas, and possibly let them go even if it’s with reluctance.  That makes me sad.  I want them to feel as limitless as I know they are.  I want them to feel entitled to pursue what interests them regardless of outside scrutiny or other people’s expectations. 

Part of the reason I wanted them in a real choir was not just for the learning experience, but to feel ownership of their voices in a way that they feel ‘qualified’ to sing anywhere, even as other children start to believe singing is only for a select few.  Their teachers openly acknowledge their artistic abilities which makes me glad.  I always tell them how much I like whatever new move they’ve added to their dance routines, but I’d like to talk them into trying a ballet class again for fun next summer.  I’m hoping the echoes of that kind of approval will resonate with them when they are older.  That if they have a memory of themselves as being officially artists or singers or dancers, then those might be outlets they don’t divorce themselves from prematurely someday.  I want them to enjoy being alive and not deny themselves ways of expressing that just because they might risk embarrassment or because it’s not part of their assumed identity.

I admit, this is primarily a pep talk for myself.  I am hopelessly self-conscious, even though I know it’s a waste of time.  My brothers live life without vanity and as a result have incredibly interesting experiences.  They never worry about if they look silly, and as a result even when they do look silly it comes off as pretty cool.  I’m not like that, even though I know in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter if I look silly.  I love to dance, but only alone, which is stupid.  I can trace it back to the day after a school dance in Jr. High when a boy I thought was kind of nice imitated how I danced to get a laugh.  I was deeply embarrassed and have never been able to dance in public without feeling self-conscious since.  Although my husband pointed out all these years later when I told him that story, that I missed the main point.  It wasn’t that the boy was making fun of me, it was that the boy had been watching me at the dance.  This perspective did help mend my ego a little, but not enough that I’m ready to hit the dance floor anytime in the near future.

I’m trying not to be as shy about singing.  I don’t really sing (there is a reason I play instruments instead) but boy it’s fun.  On the rare occasions that the kids don’t tell me to stop singing along in the car (why are parents never allowed to sing along?–I still get uncomfortable when my mom sings along so that kind of embarrassment must be hardwired) it always improves my mood to sing.  It feels good.  When I think about how much we encourage our kids to sing, from Twinkle Twinkle and The Itsy Bitsy Spider to holiday songs, all the way up to my kids’ choir or eventually school musicals, it’s amazing how few of the adults around them ever do it themselves.  It shouldn’t matter if we know someone else does it better.  Someone else always does whatever it is better, and those at the top are chasing the ghosts of talented people of the past most of the time.  That shouldn’t stop us from enjoying ourselves in the present.  Singing is fun, even if we don’t do it as well as we’d like or in a way that we even think is presentable.  I think many of us would be better off if we participated in more of the things we enjoy seeing our children do.  Life’s too short not to sing.  (Even if for cowards like myself it’s often just in the car.)