I thought I would never lose it. I thought once you could sing you would always be able to sing. I know I have (oops had) a good voice. In high school, even though I never made choir, after each audition, each year, Mr. Stanley would say the same thing; “Nancy your voice is pitch perfect but I can’t afford to have the kind of disruption I expect would happen if I grant you access to my serious musicians.”
I took the rejection as a compliment knowing he meant I would have had everyone laughing instead of working and he was honoring me in reference to my brilliant repartee. Even though every Xmas when the choir wearing their powder blue satin gowns, carrying actual real burning candles, floated down the auditorium aisles singing, “fall on your knees Oh hear the angels’ voices”, it would take me days to recover from being left out of what felt like such a genuinely spiritually holy moment.
I always harmonized. I could find the two notes above any note and belt it out. Belt it out could be my problem. Maybe too much belting because the other day just trying to sing ‘Food Glorious Food’ (from ‘Oliver’) I couldn’t reach the high notes and warbled on the low notes.
It’s not as if I’ve been silent. When Joel and I are driving around with the top down feeling gratitude with a capital G, we bellow a few of our standards: Hinei Ma Tov, (a Hebrew round meaning how good it is for brothers and sisters to sit together), Sit down you’re rockin’ the boat (the duet from Guys and Dolls) and when we think we are gifted we sing Eric Idle’s Galaxy Song from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.
I’ve heard ‘use it or lose it’ about a million things we need to keep doing to prevent aging. Keep climbing stairs, keep getting out of the chair without using hands. Even in the bedroom they’ve got us continuing or you know what? Yeah, use it or lose it. But my voice? I had no idea.
My father used to sing into my mother’s ear when they would dance in the kitchen. She gets too weary, women do get weary wearing the same shabby dress, and when she’s weary try a little tenderness. My father knew my mother was exhausted from her three jobs and hadn’t had a new dress in too long a time and music was more than a band aid.
I saw the healing power of music.
So here I am thinking accessing my singing voice was a constant and feeling shocked that I didn’t know losing it was a possibility.
Turns out without realizing it, I got rusty. That’s the word. Rusty.
I could google music teachers. I could gargle with salt water. I could giggle doing scales.
Believe me I’m thinking about a solution. Even absurd solutions.
So, if you see me in Stop and Shop singing to a cauliflower, just know you don’t have to make a concerned phone call to Dr. Silberstein. You just have to remember this column.
I’m using it. I’m simply de-rustifying.
