It’s been raining for a solid month — apocryphal storms with hail and thunder and lightning, storms that set my dog into a perpetual state of hyper-nerves. But the weather gods took a break just long enough last week to let the middle school bands strut their stuff outdoors.
There was a contingency plan in place, of course, that would’ve moved the end-of-the-year band concert indoors, but the the middle schoolers got to perform outside, under a beautifully blue sky.
Last week’s concert was the capper to my kid’s first year in band. While he’s been playing piano since the first grade, this year he’s a percussionist, and during the concert he got to play the bass drum on the crowd-pleasing “Get Around” by the Beach Boys.
For a few weeks, that’s all I heard at home. “Get Around” banged on the back of the couch. “Get Around” on the piano. The kid even played “Get Around” on his father’s old clarinet, the instrument with which he’s now fallen madly in love.
I heard “Get Around” hummed, plunked, thumped and tooted so much that I thought for a fleeting moment that I should get a shaggy, blonde haircut.
It gladdens my heart that my kid inherited my love of music. Truth be told, I could easily give up television, but I hate to think of the wrath that would rain down upon whoever would dare to take my iPod from me.
I listen to music most all the time; it seems wasteful to not fill silence with joyful noise whenever possible.
When I was pregnant with my son, I’d sometimes come home from my job for a quick lunch and a 15-minute power nap, always to whatever music suited my mood that day. After his birth, we’d settle down to nap in the old recliner in the living room to Yurgin Goth’s eclectic “Disc Drive” program on the CBC.
Music had the same effect on my kid as it did on me. So I wasn’t all that surprised to hear my toddler, then not even speaking in complete sentences, singing the chorus of “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” with jazz musician John Pizzarelli, as I cooked dinner to one of my favorite CDs.
The sweetness of that little baby voice singing along with Pizzarelli’s struck my heart then, and it’s stuck with me all these years later. I remembered it as I saw my now-middle school kid help set up for the big concert, chat with his band mates, and bang on the big bass drum.
He glanced over at us — his mom, dad and grandma — as he set the rhythm for his favorite number, making sure that we were watching his big musical moment.
And watch we did. His dad recorded the moment on the video camera and I gave him a big thumbs-up.
I remembered the diapered toddler singing to a song he didn’t understand, at least not lyrically, as I wished that this middle schooler would grow up just a bit slower.
But time — and rain — waits for no one.
