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Show about which song to do next. They also needed each other to make their music. Though I took piano lessons, I found no joy in it. My mother forced me to practice twenty minutes a day, and I spent most of that time concocting stories for my piano teacher to justify my lack of progress. There was no easy grace in my movements, no fluidity. And I was always alone at the keys. Leaning in the doorway, listening to lyrics I could not understand, I envied the shared repertoire, the history of music, the ability to be with each other without words. At the age of eleven and twelve, I could not imagine myself being with my mother in such a meaningful way. Nor did it appear I would ever be as accomplished. The ability to play, paint, sew, sing, cook, and dance came to a grinding halt in my body. Music took my mother away from me, carried her to a place I could not follow. When she sat down to play Grieg or Chopin before dinner, I knew not to bother her, not because she told me but because the music cast a spell around her, a fortress made of notes. That she was no longer mine scared me, and because I could neither play nor sing, I saw no way to follow. In a family where everything could change in the blink of an eye by an admiral's whim, a giant wave, or the negligence of a nurse, my mother's love of music threatened to take away the one thing I could trust would be there every day. So I joined the Subase Chapel Children's Choir. One Sunday a month we would perform, entering the church wearing white robes made from sheets and turquoise blue stoles that swung at our bellies. Let's go, let's go. Our junior marching song, we sang as we walked in line down the aisle. Win one for Jesus we continued. In front of a congregation comprised of submariners and their families, we would sing about Noah and Jonah, Cain and Abel, Essau and his hairy arms, often using hand motions like a 147 |
