In those days, everyone seemed
to be singing. My mother sang the old
country hymns, the simple notes
the mystery of words casting its first spell.
We all sang in church, even those
of us who could not, our thin Midwest
voices graciously lifted by those
whose joyful noisemaking rose to the rafters.
We sang at school to remember
the names of states and presidents,
invented name-songs for the pretty girls
we were still too shy to speak to.
We sang to pass the time, to count the miles
on field trips, and the long, dull drives
in our family's failing station wagons.
We sang in grocery stores and restaurants,
the teenage waiter, surely underpaid,
singing as he brought you your slice of
birthday cake, sparkling proudly with light.
The radio and television gave to us
a seemingly endless variety of jingles,
the housewives, children, and store clerks
filled with sudden musical wonder
brought on by new detergents,
deodorants, and breakfast cereals.
Nearly everything, it seemed, was worth
singing about. And everyone hummed along.
I don't know when the singing stopped,
or if any of us noticed. We had lives,
jobs, worries that we held close in silence.
But these days much of my life is again
narrated in song, measured out
by a spirited daughter, who praises
the sun and the rain without question,
who conjures goblins in hushed, lower tones,
sings the months of the year in Spanish,
and offers a silly rhyme up for her old man.
"Dad, do you like my song?," she asks
from the other room, knowing my reply
in advance; and I call back to her, from what
suddenly feels like a distance of years,
"Yes! Let me hear it one more time."
