Merry Singing on Vacation
My darling and I went on a family vacation recently (with our little girl, of course). It involved a lot of driving and camping in lovely places southward, and visiting many of our friends and family. One of the things we did while we drove was sing.
I have always loved group singing, the old-fashioned kind where no one is a professional and everyone is just having a good time. (And I never could understand the appeal of karaoke compared to singing naturally with friends and family at home. In some cases, it seems like an attempt to replace something meaningful that people are missing…only they probably don’t know what.)
Jacob and I were lamenting that so few people get to enjoy singing with loved ones the way we do. We had initially thought singing together daily was just normal, but as we’ve had more experience, we realize we have something special. Jacob grew up in a home where his mother played the piano and the whole large family (9 of them!) used to have family sing-a-longs. As they grew up and various siblings married, the sing-a-longs didn’t stop; there were just more of us to join in. I didn’t grow up in a family that sang together at home, but because I grew up in a faithful church-going tradition, I learned Christian songs, hymns, and choruses from earliest childhood. I think I know verses from thousands of songs by heart.
As we sang on our trip, I thought about how wonderful it had been to marry a man who grew up learning many of the same songs I did—and how lovely to learn more songs together over the years and forever be having music in our home—not with overdone, professional voices, but merry imperfect ones!
“Why don’t more people get to enjoy this?,” I asked him, between songs.
“I think people have gotten used to music as entertainment, as something that has to sound professional,” he said. “They can’t appreciate singing any other way.”
That thought of his compelled me to write. For I am passionate about this. Every child should know what it is to sit around the living room or fire, piano or kitchen table and sing with his or her family! If all the unity children ever get to find in activities with their families is through watching TV and movies, or having their parents attend their sporting events, how impoverished they are—and never even knowing it.
For these other activities are not the same as finding harmony together in song, partly because they don’t involve family teamwork. Perhaps, where voices blend, hearts do, too. On days when my voice is off and I sound like a warbling duck trying to blend with my family, I am still working at finding my place with them; and that symbolizes something of the effort to find unity, even—especially—in our imperfections.
Group singing with loved ones, amidst all the merry noise, in a softer strain, says, “We belong to each other—and we’ll always keep working to fit our lives more closely together in harmony.”
I am thankful we had a vacation full of song.
