Another Verse of My Hilarious Life

I wrote a song.

I know, I know.  That's not what I usually say.  It surprised me, too.

One Saturday, I was just going about my business, and I started singing a tune to a scripture I like.  I thought, "You know?  This is kind of lovely--I should write it down or I'll forget it."

So, I went over to the piano and figured out what notes I'd been singing and wrote them down in my notebook.

It made up all of three lines.  I knew that wasn't enough to be a song.  Even if the tune was inspired and the scripture was already written (and approved) thousands of years ago, no one is going to be impressed by someone getting up and singing three lines' worth of this.  I didn't need to be told.

Over the course of the day, as I thought of more words that might be okay with the scripture, I wrote them down in my notebook, too.  It's a bit daunting to try to add appropriate words to a scripture.  I felt this way even though I had confidently improved on the actual scripture.  (The original words didn't fit the meter.)

By the time my husband got home from work, I had written four verses.  I had even thought up a counter melody for the third verse and jotted that down in my notebook, too.

I met him at the door.  He looked at me like, what?

I said, shyly.  "I wrote a song."  He was as surprised as I was.

I quickly found out that one of the problems with telling people you wrote a song is that they want you to sing it for them.  And I am not a singer.  My big sister and the Primary children who used to stand in front of me made sure I understood this right off.

So, he sat down on the couch and closed his eyes.  I stood by the piano and timidly sang it to him.

"Well?"

"It sounds like a good start," he said.

Start?  I had no intention of writing more than four verses.  It turns out, of course, that he was right, because the song evolved over time.  Which I should have known would happen.  Also, I needed to write an accompaniment.

Over the next couple of weeks, I worked on the accompaniment.  I have been exposed to music all my life.  I performed on the piano and played the organ in church for years.  I even taught hundreds of piano lessons.  But I am not trained in composition, so that was the hardest part.

I had more insecurities about my song than you might think.  For one thing, it was unusual.  It wasn't going to ever be in a hymn book, that was for sure.  It was more the kind of song a mother would sing her child, or that someone would perform solo.  I use some of the hymns as lullabies, but it's hard to think of a lullaby becoming a hymn. But I believe in its message, I love the scripture it came from, and I know the tune has to have been inspired, so I persisted.

When I thought I had it together pretty well, I approached a vocalist I admire and told her I had written a song and would be honored if she liked it well enough to sing it.  She agreed to meet with me to hear it.

Soon after this, it occurred to me that the best time to present this song would be on Mother's Day, which was only a few weeks away.  I contacted the ward music decider person.  She was excited and encouraging.  I also made an appointment with my bishop, because I knew he would have to preapprove it.

My husband downloaded a software program that made it possible to write the song out on a musical staff.  Using that program, you could write a bunch of crap and have it look nice, so I used it.  I printed it out all professional-looking and took it to show my bishop, so he could read all the words and make sure I wasn't being subversive.

He made me sing the tune to him, which I can hardly blame him for, then gazed at the sheets of music for so long that I asked, "Do you have to say no?"

"No!" he said, surprised.  "I'm just all caught up in the spirit of it."  He is such a good, kind man.  I would like him to be my bishop for life.

Not that I plan to ever write any more songs.

My song was approved to be sung in my sacrament meeting on Mother's Day!  I felt like I was living someone else's life.  I told a friend at work, and she I/M-ed back, "You mean you wrote new words to a familiar tune."

"No, I wrote the words and the tune."

I can't blame people for being surprised, but it reminded me a little of the time my first husband announced that he wanted to sing a song he "wrote" at our wedding, which was simply an adaptation of "The Beverly Hillbillies" theme: "Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Ed. . . ."

So, I was less than gracious when my brother also expressed surprise about my having written the music.  "What do you think?" I joked.  "I wrote new words to the 'Star-spangled Banner'?"

Another brother tried that out: "O, Mom, can you see?  That we're ready for church!"

I laughed.

"You should do that," he said.

"You should do that," I said.

In spite of all this fun, insecurities persisted.  I kept thinking of when an old lady with a big hat had bustled into Sunday School one day when I was a child to boss us around about learning the Mother's Day song she had written, which, as forgettable as it was, I still remember.  "M is for all of the mothers, and this is for their day.  It will never be forgotten, that one Sunday in May."  Unfortunately, (or fortunately), she never went through the rest of the letters, but just left the M hanging out there by itself.  Even as a nine-year-old, I remember thinking having to sing that song as she pumped out a loud oompah-pah on the organ was lame.

I didn't want my song to be perceived like that, so I made the mistake of downplaying it.  I met with the vocalist, and she said she liked the music, and I gave her a copy, and waited.  I had told her that I didn't want her to do it if she felt about it like I did about the bossy lady with the big hat's song.  After a couple of weeks, she let me know she wouldn't be able to do it after all.

So, I looked for another vocalist.  I thought this would be easier than it was.  I was told about a lot of women with lovely voices, but each of them seemed to think of themselves as a chorus singer, not a soloist (to which I can totally relate).  And this song calls for a soloist.  A female soloist.  Who is a mother.  A young mother.  The nature of the song makes who can sing it without looking ridiculous pretty specific.  Unfortunate that, but it can't be helped.

Along the route of trying to pull a vocalist and my song together, funny things happened.  One potential vocalist suggested I "tweak" the melody by changing it from a minor key to a major key.  I thought about what she said, and asked a few people (who turn out to be my best friend, my husband, and my cubicle neighbor who is, by the way, a good musician), and they all said they wouldn't change it.  

I had been so busy apologizing for my little song, I had forgotten to stand up for it.  Very kindly, I told her I had considered her feedback seriously, but felt changing the tune would be a "major change" (ha ha!), not a tweak, so, no, I was not willing to do that.  I was still fickle about the order of the verses and would take suggestions on the accompaniment, but the tune was the inspired part of the song, and I felt sure about it.

As I declined to change my tune, she declined to sing my song.

Someone who knew about my song pulled me aside to reassure me that she would never tell anyone about it.  As if that were reassuring!  Another person said, "Did you hear about that statue of Jesus that some guy made and covered with feces?  What's art to one person is not art to another."

Yes.  This was said to me.  But I forgave, because I knew it wasn't mean-spirited, just a clumsy analogy.  And because saying stupid things is my specialty.  I'm better at it than I am at writing stupid songs.

So there was a moment when I spurted both laughter and tears at the same time.  And moments where I consumed some humble pie.

I did find another vocalist with a lovely voice. 

And I learned something.  The more I had to defend my song, the more sure I became about it.  Funny thing, that.  I woke up the next morning laughing and confident, at total peace.  Everyone doesn't have to like it, and that's. . .okay.

I'm choosing to believe it is going to be lovely, and I am going to be a part of something new and beautiful.  And that's awesome.

Payoff for Patience

As I rushed onto my porch yesterday morning after my early workout and scooped up my newspaper, I smiled at the headline, "Payoff for Patience."  I have no idea what that news article was about--I didn't have time to read it.  I smiled, because my oldest son would be receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees that day.

The payoff is mostly his, for his patience in getting this far through school. Of course there were times I had to be patient with him.  But, for the most part, he has been ahead of me--always reaching for the next level, the next privilege, the next responsibility before I was ready for him to be.  Although I was most patient with him then, he was an unhappy baby.  He was much happier when he could self-ambulate and try out the things he could see and think to do.

It's probably a mom thing, but as I sat in the Huntsman Center watching him graduate, his whole life flashed before my eyes.  From the moment he was born with his arms outstretched to embrace the world to his stretching to be a full foot taller than I am, I thought of it all, and texted him some of my thoughts.

I did my best to give him all I could, but he didn't have an easy life.  As a small child, his home life was not ideal, and for half of his childhood, I was a single mother.  Yet, there is something golden about him.  I should have given him Midas for his middle name.  He has the ability to envision the best for himself, then make it happen.  Socially affable and thoughtful--always careful to be kind, he makes people believe in him.  Throughout his life, I have watched others view him as a leader.  Now a full-grown adult and my academic peer, he has surpassed me in numerous ways already, and will continue to grow into his great destiny.

I was fortunate that I could see him well during the commencement exercises.  Tall and handsome, he also stood out because of the bright color designated for his college and the cords for extra achievements around his neck.  He had never mentioned them.


This was the end of a long road of education for him, a road he largely paved for himself.  But I knew as I looked at him that it was not the end of the road.  He has managed to get full free-ride scholarships to four of the most prestigious universities for PhD work, and had to turn down three of them.  Proud and humbled at the same time, I watched him and thanked God for him and what little I could do for him.  He came to me as a great soul, and I am only glad that I didn't completely mess up.

As we stood for the national anthem, I could feel my heart pounding under my hand.  I was reminded that what little I had to do with his achievements I could not have done without the freedoms I enjoy from living in a socially advanced country that allows women some rights.

I remembered his childish voice proclaiming "[His name for himself] do it!"  I remembered the first moment I knew he would be an engineer--when I saw him not build a tower with his new blocks, but lay out a city.  I remembered his first day of kindergarten.  I remembered hundreds of little and big things.

And I remembered one Mother's Day. He was about nine years old, and he had been asked to give a talk in church.  I spent much of the Saturday before his talk telling him stories about one of his great-great-grandmothers and one of his great-grandmothers.  He then worked on my first new computer on what he wanted to say to the congregation about his beloved Grandma.

It was past his bedtime by then.  I sat beside him folding clothes and trying to be patient while he captured his thoughts keystroke by keystroke.  Then he turned to me.  I felt my cheeks pink as I realized that he was looking at me as the next generation down from his Grandma.  It had been a trying week for single mother and son, and I didn't think I wanted to know what he would have to say about me in comparison to the great women we came from.

"You are a good example because you studied hard and got a scholarship," he said, and blinked back tears only a split second before I had to.

I caught him as he leaned forward and held him, then let him go.  Just as I have been doing in slow motion since he was sent to me.