On Saturday mornings, the opera music would filter up to where I was still sleeping in my bright green room on the second floor. Was it “La Boheme,” or “La Traviata?” I don’t know. I only know it was loud and I was annoyed at losing sleep.
But the music was beautiful and love of music was one of the great gifts that Dad gave me. In my memory, there was always music in our house. Dad would play thunderously and wonderfully on the piano, crashing through Mozart sonatas in a way that I could never replicate. There was music on the stereo and lots of singing.
I remember gathering around the campfire on camping trips roasting marshmallows and singing folk songs. And then there were all those Christmases when Dad would sit at the piano and we would all gather around and sing most of the songs in the book from “Jingle Bells” to “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Sometimes we took our act on the road in the neighborhood singing our carols and collecting Christmas cookies as our reward.
I’m grateful for all my years of piano lessons and for all those hours spent practicing. Dad and I played a duet together for one piano recital and what I remember most is not the recital itself but the practicing and how fun it was to make music together. We both laughed a lot when we practiced even when we made mistakes.
It was in those moments that we seemed happiest together and it gives me great joy that we still make music together on family occasions and camping trips. We still gather around the piano at Christmas time and my own children are learning to play the piano now so perhaps that joy in music will continue into the next generation.
When I cast back in my memory to recall those far-off days of my childhood, I also remember sitting on the front porch with Dad late on a warm summer night, having a heart to heart talk.
We were both night owls and on summer night, my bedtime was a little later and Dad would sit out on that beautiful porch reading sometimes. I’d find Dad there when I couldn’t sleep or was up late reading myself and we’d talk about things in a way that didn’t happen when everyone was up and about.
I’m not even sure what we would talk about. Was it my bad dreams and the fact that we both slept fitfully? It felt like a kind of honor to talk over the events of the day with Dad.
As a parent, I’ve learned how thankless parenting can be. And now that I am faced with some of those same parenting task, I see so clearly how many of the lessons I learned came from those daily tasks.
When we all get together to sing, as we will for Dad’s birthday today, I hope Dad realizes that the roots of those happy moments we share today started deep in the ground years when Dad played another chorus of “Joy to the World.”
