I'm off adventuring with whales, so here's a throwback to March 2012...enjoy!
The last couple of weeks have been a bit challenging for the Fedonczak family. One kid had a fender bender and one kid was tied in knots about a singing audition. The drama combined with preparations for a big trip was enough to knock me off my axis.
As I was gathering my thoughts (and then questioning them:), my middle child came to tell me she wasn’t going to the audition she’d been preparing for, as one of the other singers pulled a face when she asked where the auditions were, saying, “Really, you’re trying out?” while shaking her head with disdain.
My kid makes that mean that she’s not accomplished enough to sing the National Anthem, because it’s so hard (Side note: why is it so hard? Why did we pick a National Anthem that’s so difficult it trips up even professional singers? I guess because, as Americans, we love a challenge! My daughter was not loving the challenge).
Unlike the other girls trying out, my daughter had never sung our anthem, and she was woefully short on Mariah Carey hand gestures and runs that go on for days; nor did she think she was the best singer in the world or even in the school. However, what she has in abundance is heart and soul. You feel the song when she sings–your heart vibrates with love, or at least mine does.
I laid down my journal and focused on what was surely a teachable moment, “So tell me again why you don’t want to try out?” She replied, “I can’t hit the “Free” note…this song is so hard! All the other girls have sung it for other performances, and I don’t sound like them.” I pointed out that she just performed a song with a higher note, and it was breathtaking; she cocked her head and murmured, “You’re right.”
Can we just pause for a moment and savor those two little words; they are so rare coming out of a teenager’s mouth…o.k., moving on. I told her, “You’re right, you can’t hit that note the way the other diva singers do, that’s true. But why would you want to? That’s their business. Your business is to sing your song."
"Sing about the feeling that Frances Scott Key felt as he was watching his town burn; he thought all was lost until he saw that flag still standing…then he knew that we would prevail. Sing that song. Sing it to me. If you really can’t do it, I will support you backing out.”
So, she closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and told her story. It was so true and pure that I was crying by the last note. It made me proud to be an American and really proud to be the mother of a kid that can produce such beauty. After I stopped snotting myself, I told her, “Sing it just like that. If you don’t win, that’s the judges’ business; you will have sung your song, and that’s all you can do.”
She went and auditioned. She said that she didn’t hit the notes perfectly, but she sang it her way. As fate would have it, the judges must have enjoyed her song, because she will be performing at the commencement ceremony. In a real twist, they chose her to sing it with one of the divas as a duet.
I’m sure I will have the same conversation with her again in a couple of weeks. Maybe she will be just as freaked out, or maybe she will swallow the fear and just go out and sing. It made me think of my own journey.
I’m finishing a book on parenting that has been clamoring to be written for ten years. As I complete my final draft, the excitement I’ve felt while writing it is turning into fear. “What if it’s not any good? What if no one wants to publish it?
What if I don’t sell any copies outside my own family?”
It’s like I told my daughter, that’s not my business; that’s the marketing person or the publisher’s business. All I can do is sing my song.
XO
Terri
