Sing, Sing a Song

I spent a lot of time in the car last week listening to my daughter sing.  I don’t usually use the car so much.  In fact, days go by when I don’t use the car at all.  Last week, however, my daughter and I were in and out of the car multiple times every day.  We took my son to day camp on Monday and Tuesday and picked him up again.  (On Wednesday my husband took my daughter to preschool, so she was spared the trip to day camp.)  One day we ran errands—a donation to the thrift store, a quick stop by church, library books into the dropbox, a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin, “a couple of things” at the grocery store.  We were in the car for over an hour that morning.  My daughter sang along with Lisa Loeb’s Camp Lisa.  On Thursday I picked her up early from preschool and brought her back home for lunch, then I drove the kids to their doctor’s appointments.  My daughter bopped along to songs from Sid the Science Kid. On Friday morning we headed up into the mountains for a little family vacation.  My daughter sang through Camp Lisa again.  Then my husband asserted his turn, but later my daughter listened to songs by Elizabeth Mitchell on the iPod.

I love listening to my daughter sing.  She can’t always quite keep up with the music, and she wears such a look of concentration on her face.  I’m amazed at how many songs she knows.

In our cabin overlooking the lake, we were “unplugged”—there was no cd player to slip a cd of lullabies into at bedtime.  I sang my kids to sleep for the first time in years.  I know three songs by heart:  “Amazing Grace,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and “The Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie.

I am a good enough singer that I don’t feel like I drag down the church choir.  I sang in the concert choir in high school and was in the show choir, too.  My brother and sister played in the marching band.  My husband, although a great music lover, can’t carry a tune very far, and my son isn’t showing much musical talent, either. Singing is my thing, even if I am only a good enough singer.  I used to wonder if I would be envious of my own kids if they were better than me at the things that I was good at, those things that are part of my sense of identity.  Listening to my daughter sing in the car, I realize with surprise (and relief) that I am not.  If my daughter goes from the back seat to back stage, with a star on her dressing room door, I will be nothing but thrilled.

Perhaps I will take a little credit.