No Singing at the Table

My mother had a few rules for us when were young and not singing at the table was one of them. It may seem like an odd rule but you didn’t know me as a little girl.

My sister and I sang together–all the time. When she was four and I was six, we joined our church’s Cherub Choir. She sang soprano and I sang alto, since I could read and she couldn’t. And we sang all the time. We made it up if we didn’t know parts for a song and I harmonized and she sang descants, experimenting to see what was best. We sang on the way to school together, whether walking or in the car with our grandmother. Grandma liked, for some reason, the Air Force and Army and Marine and Navy songs, and we sang “here we go, into the the wild, blue yonder, flying high, into the sky….”so many times with her, it was funny. We
sang in our yard, swinging on our swing set. We sang in the wading pool. We sang every where and any where…..except at the dining room table.
Mom, who was a singer herself, felt there should be one place we shouldn’t sing. We got around it at holidays, when we sang Grace for our family. Our siblings were not all singers and I think Mom didn’t want them to resent us. For Grace at Thanksgiving and at Christmas and Easter, we all sang the Blessing in the form of a round. All in parts and all together. And it was magical.

1 thought on “No Singing at the Table

  1. The first time I heard that four year old and that six year old sing — nonchalantly, as they played in the yard — I was stunned. I was 13 and I was listening to the voices of angels.

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