Saint Elizabeth Dobro Blues

There's something infectious about songs in this family. All it takes is one person to hum a bar, and someone else picks up the tune and carries it around with them. Usually it's Kitty Bill. But any one of us is susceptible to the draw of melody. Even Einstein.

There's something very cool when a Dad picks up a song his child is learning and plays around with it. I think it gives a child more confidence in a way, more respect for what they're learning-- after all, music is cool! Especially when Einstein plays it. The kids always get a kick out of it.

I don't know quite what else to say about this, just that I have to share it with you. This is our Saint Elizabeth song morphed and played by Einstein on a homemade dobro. It makes me smile every time I hear it.

Songs on Sunday

The rain kept us in all weekend.

We spent most of Sunday singing together and playing music and then recording it. We had such a blast!

It all started when Sunburst realized that her rat Ronia didn't have a signature song. A while ago Einstein, the dad, made up a reggae song for Sunburst's rat Pepper, and all the kids sing back-up on it. It's very cute. But poor Ronia, Sunburst felt, was feeling a bit left out. So Einstein came up with the chords, and Sunburst set to work creating "Redwall-style" lyrics with three verses and a chorus. Here's just a taste:

"If'n you see a rat who's sweet as can be
Who can cuddle like a babe an' seem so free
Eat like a hare an' go like a flow
An' have a belly white as the snow

Yer lookin' at
Ronia, Ronia
Love 'er, hug 'er, hold 'er
Ronia, Ronia..."

We were having so much fun that we decided to change the words around into a birthday song for Einstein's mom. Yep, we're one of those families that will call on your birthday and sing the most ridiculous things just to show you how much you're loved-- our style falls curiously somewhere between the Partridge and the Addams families. (Did the Addams Family ever sing?) Anyway...

There was quite a bit of flute music going on, too. I've been writing a lot of songs lately to go with Moonshine's lessons, but I've been struggling with finding the time it takes to write them all out in musical notation. Now that Moonshine has really taken off with the flute, she has been delightedly compiling each song she learns into her own music book. This is great fun, and such a joy for her! Except that she has to wait around for me to write them out. Waiting for mom is... well, not so much fun.



My ultimate plan with having Moonshine compile this music book is so I can eventually teach her to read the music that she already knows, like I did with Sunburst. Ergo, it's important to have the songs all written down properly.

Enter the new love of my life-- Finale Notepad. I don't have a ton of free time to sit around and write things out, but I can enter them into this software, tweak and tweak, and play it back until it sounds right. I was so inspired by how quickly this process went, the songs just came flying. The program is easy enough for Sunburst to work on her own. And it's a great way to self-check your own musical writing, at least for me, because sometimes I screw up. It's true. Or worse yet, I make a song up and completely forget it an hour later. I hope that's a sign of a full life and not an aging brain. ;-)

Here's a simple little math song:



Don't forget to notice the clever title. ;-)

Buried treasure

In our first grade Language Arts block last year, I introduced the letter "X" through the story of Pirate Jack looking for buried treasure. We accompanied him on his journey-- pacing out the steps with him and pretending to dig alongside him for the bounty. It wasn't long before our mutual work uncovered a large treasure chest. Upon opening it, the pirate discovered more gold and precious jewels than any of us will ever see in our lifetime. He would be a rich man, indeed, if he were interested in all this "wealth." But he wasn't. He kept digging through that chest until he uncovered the real wealth. And old, dilapidated book of stories that belonged to his great, great grandpappy. The pages were loose, the spine ripped, the cover well-worn and askew... but Pirate Jack was beside himself with joy. He walked away from the gold and jewels clutching the old book to his chest and grinning madly.

I'm wont to agree with Pirate Jack.

Recently we have come into possession of a large lot of lovely, old books. We are a family passionate about reading. Addicted, one might say, to the pleasure of well-written, simple, pure-hearted books. Surely, we read a bit of candy here and there. But lovely old books are a staple of our literary diet. And nothing tickles me more.

I was fortunate enough to find a few of these gems sifting through stacks at the used bookstore and in library discard. Others were given to my children as gifts from an elderly neighbor who is cleaning out her attic. And the last one, The Wee Scotch Piper, I found in a Scottish shop while Einstein was trying to buy a new drone reed for his bagpipes. I thought it was a decorative display, but to my utter delight, it was for sale!

The one book of the lot that was the most surprising find of all is Our Singing World: Singing and Rhyming, a U.S. school song book copyright 1950 by Ginn and Company, republished in 1957. I picked it up at the used bookstore for a mere $2. It's chock full of songs that we have already come to know and love through various Waldorf resources and contains countless others that we WILL come to know and love. It's a real treasure.

As an added bonus, every song has musical notation. I plopped open the book and picked out a morning song aptly titled, "Morning Song." I started singing it, and before long the girls started singing along with me. Sunburst came over to where I was sitting and asked if she could have a turn looking at the words. I handed the book over to her, and next thing I knew she had hauled over the toy piano and began trying to plink out the notes. YES!

So what's a mom to do, but grab out a pentatonic flute and play along with her. She had to fudge it a bit since the toy piano doesn't give you a whole lot of scale to work with. I had to fudge it a little bit too, since the song has more notes than the pentatonic scale. We ended up having a little talk about "fudging" it, musically. I'm planning on sticking with this same song for a week or so to see where it takes us.

Morning Song (Swiss Folk Song translated by Margaretta Wassali)

The sun is shining brightly. Get up, Katerlin.
The birds are singing sweetly. Get up, Katerlin.

chorus
Hurry up, out of bed. Time for breakfast, sleepy head.
Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling. Get up, sleepy head.

The rabbits jump and scamper. Get up, Katerlin.
The cows are in the pasture. Get up, Katerlin.

chorus

As if that wasn't joy enough, there's also a knitting song. A knitting song! And yes, I'll post it soon. Sunburst just cast-on for a new project, so I think we'll be singing this one next. But right now, I've got to go clear a shelf to hold all this glorious treasure.

The Gamble of Song

Welcome to The Singing Lottery, where every morning we each draw a song out of a hat, open our hearts, breathe deeply into our lungs, lift our heads to the heavens and SING. Together. I know it sounds strange, but hear me out.

This is my answer to the impossibility of a daily circle time. We would love to have a circle every day, and it sounds good in theory. But that lengthy, involved, lovely, composed circle with all the songs and fingerplays and recitations just isn't something we can do everyday in our house, especially with Kitty Bill competing for attention.

But... I still want my girls to sing. Daily. Together. In a lovely, harmonious way. As a guided activity, which is very different from the normal and contstant outpouring of their own creative song that happens throughout each day. In this I want them to listen. To memorize. To sing together. To work together, and to start the morning with song. Every day. United and present and lyrical and healthy.

I think it's IMPORTANT, but you don't have to take my word for it.

“Music is a strange thing. I would say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter, a sort of nebulous mediator, like and unlike each of the things it mediates — spirit which requires manifestation in time and matter that can do without space.” --Heinrich Heine
"We need no convincing about how phenomenally good music makes us feel. There's nothing esoteric about the fact that when we sing, our pupils dilate and a rush of endorphins (our body's natural painkillers) surge through our bodies. Singing increases oxygenation in our bloodflow, tones the nervous system, heightens our immunity, and affects glandular secretions. Healers often use sustained vocalization of individual pitches for the purpose of resonating specific body areas to realign and rebalance." --Naturally You Can Sing

Singing promotes deep breathing, oxengenates the blood, stimulates brain activity, releases 'feel good' endorphins, reduces stress, builds self-confidence, enhances memory, and boosts creativity! --Beth Lawrence, Viva La Voice

"Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful." --Plato

Sounds great, doesn't it? Singing daily for health and inner peace and connectedness. It's a communal exercise. Turning it into a game like The Singing Lottery brings in the element of surprise, mystery, and fun. What will we sing today? My girls can't wait to find out! But of course there are rules, too.

The Singing Lottery Rules
1. Anyone can contribute a song to the hat.
2. Each song must impart a sense of goodwill, joy, spirit, and/or welcome.
3. The songs can be in any language.
4. Each person has to draw at least one song from the hat.
5. After each participant has drawn a song, the singing commences.
6. Each participant must sing standing up (posture and breath are important.)
7. All songs will be sung together, as a group.

We're having great fun with it, currently singing selections from Sing Through the Day, This is the Way We Wash-a-Day, Teach Me German, and the musical play of Peter Pan. Moonshine in particular has been heard repeating the songs throughout the day. Not just Moonshine though, me too. I can't help myself. It feels good.

What will you sing?

Feel free to play along.

Piano Lessons

A while back I made an agreement with Einstein that we'd sign Sunburst up for "formal" music lessons before her eighth birthday. Somewhere he read that this was Important for some such reason... maybe it was that they learn better, or faster, or fire some special neurons in their heads that only exist before the eighth year, I don't quite remember. I'm sure it was a Good reason. When she showed interest in playing the piano this summer, we conveniently signed her up to take lessons with our piano-teacher neighbor.

It didn't quite go as I had expected.

First, I'll say that my expectations always get me in trouble. However, when I sign a child up for lessons, I expect that they will be taught something, and that the person I'm paying will do the teaching. This was the way it worked when Sunburst took gymnastics lessons, trapeze lessons, and felted doll-making lessons. The only finger I had to lift was the one that signed my name on the check. I assumed the same would be true for piano lessons. Boy was I wrong.

The piano teacher taught only at the very first lesson and then assigned Sunburst homework in her music book, which then we, her parents, were supposed to help her figure out, i.e. TEACH to her. Sunburst went back to the next lesson, demonstrated the material she learned at home and received more homework. By the end of the third lesson, when Sunburst received upwards of a dozen pages of new material to learn while the "teacher" was on vacation, I about nearly split in half. What exactly was I paying for?

I've heard the horror stories of parents having to help their public-schooled children through two or more hours of homework a night, and oddly enough it's those same parents that say, "Oh, I could never homeschool." Don't they know they're already doing it? We're all homechoolers here.

Apparently I can now add Piano Teacher to my ever-growing list of credentials.

I pulled Sunburst out after the fourth lesson. She refused to go back until she had completed all the homework assignments, and was extremely dissapointed when the "teacher" didn't have enough time during the lesson to check all of these new songs Sunburst had worked so hard on. Worse yet, this teacher uses a reward system to get the kids motivated to play. After they master a new page/song, they get rewarded with a sticker on that page. When they finish the book, they get a prize.

The whole idea curdled my stomach. I'm one of those crazy fools that thinks learning should be its own reward. And it was hard to tell until that fourth lesson whether or not learning piano was it's own reward until Sunburst didn't get stickers for the work she had done. She didn't get the recognition for doing the work-- really, I think that's what the meat of it was, that she worked really hard to finish up those pages and learn the songs, and then they didn't even go over them. All that work for naught. I'm sure that's how Sunburst saw it.

She came home from that lesson completely disinterested in the two new pages she was supposed to work on. I cancelled her next, and final, lesson, and instead she just practiced the three songs she would play at the piano recital. She was so motivated to dress up and play in front of people that she woke up at the crack of dawn, slipped on her puffy crinolin-lined dress, and woke us up to the sound of her fingers plinking away with wild abandon. She practiced off and on all day, on songs that she could play with her eyes closed by now, and she did just fine at the recital.

But on the way home she asked if she could have a reward. "For what?" For getting up and playing in front of people. "Why should I reward you for something YOU wanted to do?" It was hard, she said. "So was learning to read," I said, "which was also your idea." True, she said. "And did you get a reward for doing that?" Yes, she said. The whole world opened up.

Such insight from a seven-year old! I had to pick my lower jaw up off the floorboard of the car before I could respond. "True," I said. "Welcome to the whole world of music."

As things would turn out, our piano-teacher neighbor moved out-of-state shortly after the recital. We met the woman who was recommended to take her place. Already feeling a bit jaded about the whole thing, I frankly asked her what her teaching style was. She didn't appear to have one or even understand the question. I tried again, "Do you teach using a rewards system?" Oh yeah, there's rewards, she said. Kids love the sticker thing.

Now for those of you that don't know me, my musical background is zip. Sure, I've been singing along with the radio since I could talk, and I seem to have this uncanny ability to memorize lyrics and sing along in the grocery store, but really I have never played an instrument, never had formal training in anything musical, and up until the flute business, I considered myself completely inept. Although I can hum like nobody's business, and as a child we practiced playing our noses while we sang along to "Winchester Cathedral." But that's it. When it comes to the formal subject of music I'm really, incredibly sensitive and hyper-critical Eggshell woman.

I know. A whole post about overcoming perfectionism, and like you, I'm all too human. This is that area for me. And yet... it appears as if "formal" music instruction will continue at home, taught by yours truly.

The earth is going to move. The ground is going to shake. And the whole world is going to open up... for both of us.

Book of Music

The last few days have been spent in recovery from a terrible head cold. Kitty Bill, Einstein, and I have been down for the count. Sunburst and Moonshine, on the other hand, have been bursting with energy-- so much energy in fact that Sunburst, after working on her Book of Music, put on her fanciest dress and decided to convene with the fairies 10 feet high up in the tree. It wasn't the highest she has ever climbed, ask all the anxious homeschooling moms in Austin, Texas. At the Valentine's party last year she must have topped 18 feet in a massive and sturdy oak tree. But this tree in our backyard is no oak, nor is it the icon of all things sturdy. The branch broke and Sunburst fell. Ten feet. Down. And landed on her back.

It knocked the wind right out of her, and her neck has been stiff and sore, but luckily she was more frightened than hurt. Nothing is broken but her faith in trees, and that will repair itself in time. Plus she got her fancy dress dirty, and I made her put it in the hamper. That was pretty much the nail in her coffin. With all the sneezing and coughing and tree-falling, I carted our injured chipmunk off to the local wildlife rescue center. There is only so much rehab a sick mom can do.

But what of that Book of Music Sunburst is making?

She is loving the idea of "owning" her music. I gave her xerox copies of the songs she has already learned on her flute. She cut them out and has begun pasting them into a new main lesson book. She wants to write in the song titles, herself, and this makes sense because she has different names for them than perhaps their proper names. For example, David Darcy's "Thumb Song" she calls "Deedle Dum."

What really makes sense is the owning. Sunburst does this when she draws a picture from a story I've told her. She did this for each letter of the alphabet-- she owned them because she wrote them down, the letter and accompanying picture. She owned the numbers as she learned them by putting them into her book. She owned the stories we told through form drawing by drawing down the forms. And she can retell them and relive them by opening a book.

Now she gets to do this with her music. Surely, the songs already live inside of her. I suppose I could have had her draw a picture for each song, but giving her the picture of the song itself, the notes on the bar, was what she truly wanted. She wanted to be like her Dad, who has music books all over the house. And this activity fit her need precisely.

She has also begun to transfer these flute songs onto a keyboard (set to piano sound.) She's not reading the music but only taking the sounds and trying to recreate them on the keyboard. It's not as easy as all that, since there are only seven notes on her flute and a multitude of black and ivory keys to choose from. But it's interesting and captivating, and she's doing a fairly decent job of it. The songs are recognizable albeit creative.

Our neighbor next door, the pipe organist, gives piano lessons to children. Sunburst is eager to try, and we'll let her follow that dream this summer. It won't usurp her flute lessons. Sunburst has a thick attachment to her flute, and we'll continue learning new pentatonic songs as the opportunities arise this summer. Perhaps the exercises and songs she learns on piano she will attempt to transfer to the flute.

In any case, I'm hoping it will keep her out of the trees for a few more days.

* I realize the songs appear illegible. That's a slight of computer trick, since they are not my songs. They were written by the wise David Darcy and are included in his wonderful booklet, Playing the Pentatonic Flute and Recorder. You can find him online HERE.
Feel free to use a song I did write, "Robin Red," in your own homeschooling endeavors. You can find the music HERE.

We're still learning

I think I was onto something when I said Sunburst and I just couldn't focus. We're sick! She came down with it first. Coughing. Runny nose. Fever. Strange loud noises in her head, or under her bed, or some such thing. She said it sounded like someone meditating.

I don't know about that, but I feel like I've been catapulted into the side of a rock. I ache. My head is full, my throat is raw, my nose is red-- heck, even my eyes are running. Needless to say, I sat around today hoping to rebound as quickly as Sunburst.

Now that she's feeling chipper again, Sunburst quickly announced after lunch that she was bored. It stormed all morning, and the kids had already sat on the porch and watched the lightning for a good long time. I suggested she draw something. No. Knit? No. Read? No. "I give up," I said, and went back to my own knitting.

A little while later she emerged with her flute and pestered Einstein who had his nose buried in a blues songbook. "I want to read music, too," she told him. "Will you show me?"

So Einstein showed her his book and told her the letters for the bass notes he was reading. She caught on quickly, but of course bass notes aren't really going to work for the pentatonic flute. So he sent her over to me.

Reading sheet music. Are we ready for this? I stuck "Robin Red" through the copy machine-- a song she knows by heart, and another one we had briefly visited, "Saddle My Pony", from Clump-a-Dump and Snickle-Snack. I didn't give her much advice to go on, really. My heart wasn't in it today and my nose was running madly. I said, "See these? These are notes, just pictures of the sounds you play. You start here. This is a picture of these holes covered up. This is one less, like this. For every note you play, there is a picture here. Does that make sense?"

She carried them off into the laundry room, since Kitty Bill was napping, and she played for a good while. When she came out for dinner she announced that she had just about got "Saddle My Pony" figured out. "Did you hear it? Was I close?"

I think she needs to own this music.

Like I said, we'll be learning loads this summer, despite any intentions to take time off and have fun. Learning is fun. I'm so glad Sunburst is around to keep us all focused on the goal. All fun, all the time, learning as we go, together.

Tomorrow I'll break out a new main lesson book for her, and she can go to town filling it with the songs she knows. I'll print them out, she can cut them, glue them, decorate them, whatever. It's going to be great!

Highland cows and tuba museums

One bonus of homeschooling is being able to simply pick up and go whenever the mood strikes us. For Memorial Day weekend we decided to head off to Alma, Michigan to the Alma Highland Festival and Games, and we all had a great time.

Apart from my time in the womb, none of us had really been to Michigan before. It's not one of those states that you accidentally happen upon on the way to someplace else. You have to mean to go there. You have to drive through miles and miles of flat farmland to get there, where you see more miles and miles of flat farmland. And lakes. No shortage of water in Michigan.

I grew up in Southern Arizona, so the idea of having a lake in my backyard is purely preposterous. Water just didn't happen, unless it was chlorinated. People in rural Michigan know how to waterski and ice skate. They know all about swinging off ropes and canoeing and all that. People like me, desert folk, have to actively pursue experiencing these things. I still can't ice skate, but it's on my list.

So we went, we saw, and we danced to the sound of bagpipes en mass. And I think we learned a few things, too:

1. Always ask a local where to eat.

If you're ever in Okemos, Michigan don't forget to check out the Traveler's Club International Restaurant and Tuba Museum. Fine food and more tubas than you can shake a stick at.

2. Never, ever settle for the restaurant attached to the hotel.

We have a pretty strict diet, but we try not to be food snobs and eat out like normal folks from time to time. After an exhausting day in the sun and humidity with a satchel of peanut butter sandwiches, we dared to take a chance on dinner at TGI Fridays. If you need your innards greased, regardless of the fare, this would be the place to eat. For us, it was an exercise in futility. But we live and learn and keep smiling. We always travel with our handy dandy reference guide to healthy eating, Healthy Highways, a book brimming with health food stores and vegetarian eateries across the U.S. It's one of the better travel investments we have made.

3. Juice boxes, regardless of their contents, are never a good idea in the car. Period.

4. Michigan looks like a mitten, and somehow that's funny to my kids. (I always thought Texas looked like Fred Flinstone's head, but that trip to cartoonland is lost upon my poor, media-deprived children.)

5. You get great hotel deals by booking online via Hotwire.

We stayed our first two nights at the only motel near Alma with an available room. It was dilapidated and grungy, and we were afraid to let Kitty Bill touch anything. For the next two nights we hotwired a 3-star hotel for a few bucks more. What a difference! We spent some time in the indoor pool and the service desk actually called to see if we needed anything. We woke in the morning to a hand-written thank you note under our door and a complimentary newspaper. Who does that kind of thing anymore? Apparently, the Holiday Inn.

6. If you want anyone to come out of their house, you don't need to knock... just stand in their yard and play the bagpipes.
We met lots of nice folks in Howell and Brighton, Michigan where my parents grew up. Einstein played a bagpipe tribute to my Grandpa Jim, who was born near Edinburgh, Scotland but died in a farmhouse in Michigan when I was Sunburst's age. We drove out to the farm where he died, stood together under the great pine trees, and Einstein cracked off a few respectful dirges while the kids searched in vain for my mom's wedding band that was lost there in the snow over 30 years ago.

7. Highland cows are massive creatures of immense beauty.

We met two Highland cows at the Alma Festival. The bull stood about five feet tall with long, shaggy hair and protracted, curling horns. He was gorgeous and docile, with a nose as big as Kitty Bill's face. If you were hungry and had a lot of freezer space, I'm guessing a family could eat off one of these creatures for two years. We don't eat meat, but boy! For the first time ever I felt the calling to own a cow. I'm as bad as the kids: "Please, can't we just get one? I promise to feed it and turn its poop into manure for the garden."

Highland cow photo taken by Hajor, 21.Feb.2004. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike License

I am Robin Red

Sunburst has been learning to play the pentatonic flute since February. I've been using David Darcy's booklet/cd set Playing the Pentatonic Flute and the Pentatonic Recorder to teach myself so that I can teach her. I can't say enough wonderful things about this booklet. It has changed the way I think about music and my own musical capabilities.

For instance, I now think capable as opposed to incapable. I live with Einstein who is a musical genius. He can, and does, play anything he can get his hands on. But he can't teach me... he's my husband after all, and I have this Complex about music. Or shall I say had. I no longer play secretively in the laundry room. David Darcy has brought me into the light.

And now I can give that to Sunburst.

Our second form drawing block was based on a story I made up about the adventures of Robin Red and his search for Spring. With that in mind, I found myself being challenged to write a song of my own for Sunburst to play on the pentatonic flute: Robin Red. It's simple-- using only the notes A, B, and D. But simple is key, I think. It met her where she was, connected to her heart, and took her playing up a notch.

She struggled with it for a couple of weeks, but after her experience meeting a Native American flute player, she returned to this song with renewed vigor and quickly mastered it. Her own musical confidence grew by leaps and bounds with this song, as if she's now swiftly flying along, too.

Cha-Cha, the bee, and me

I was waiting in line at the craft store when I found myself standing in judgment of another woman and her kids. It was just Kitty Bill and I, sandwiched in a long check-out line, and at the front of the line was what I presumed to be a Grandma, a mom, and two kids. This wasn't any kind of Grandma we have in our family-- this one had a Cha-Cha DiGregorio thing going on. The big hair, tight clothes, scarf around her neck, the whole bit.

That's fine; I'm a big Grease fan. I'm no Sandra Dee, but I probably lean more that way than the other (we're just going to leave the leg hair and Birkies out of this one, okay.) The mom-type person was also dressed more, shall we say, modern. Or retro-modern. Hip huggers, heels, hairspray, you get the picture. Anyway, aside from the Grease flashback, I wouldn't have paid these ladies any mind, that is until the kids caught my attention.

The little girl with them looked about six-years-old. She sat down on a chair, crossed her legs, put her hands out and exclaimed something about not wanting to "break a heel or chip a nail." And I was forced to do a double-take. She was younger than Sunburst, and she was wearing hip-huggers, high heels, and carrying a bustier purse. At six-years-old!

Then she got up and did some kind of dance, to which Cha-Cha Di-Grandma remarked that they should charge us all for this entertainment. The little girl said, "I make 40 bucks a day." And the little boy, about the same age, said, "Good. You can buy me a gang." And he crossed his arms in that defiant stance and pouted. At least his pants weren't hanging around his ankles, which tells you I've fully crossed over into the 'Don't trust anyone over 30' category.

The other customers and I exchanged glances that said, "Yikes!" And I instantly thought, Thank God my kids aren't like this. I paid for my glue stick, patted myself on the back, and went home to my angelic children.

We spent some time in the yard, and Sunburst announced that she had found "the bee who lost his buzz," and tromped through the house with said bee perched on a dandelion. I started to think to myself, "crazy child," but then I remembered the little bustier girl. High heels or entomologist...? No brainer there.

An hour later we hurried the kids out the door to attend our neighbor's pipe organ recital at a local church, where rows 1 and 2 were reserved for families with children. It was a beautiful room and quite small, I think, as far as churches go. We arrived a few minutes early and waited patiently. Kitty Bill shyly flirted with the women behind us, and Sunburst and Moonshine, glowing in their new Easter dresses, sat very primly and quietly exchanging glances with all the other children. Homeschool enrichment at it's finest. Perfect, I thought. And then the music started.

What was I thinking taking my kids to an organ recital? At a church, no less. People dress up, sit quietly, and don't clap or fidget or anything until the song sequence is over --and these are good ten, fifteen minute songs; it's like a Phish jam but obviously not very Phish-like. Kitty Bill only made it through the first two parts of the first song before he started audibly fussing. And so what does one do with a slightly fussy baby? Breastfeed.

In the past this handy device has worked in many scenarios where I needed to soothe and quiet my children-- whether they were teething, bleeding profusely, or I was trying to handle an important phone call or make it through my father's funeral, breastmilk has always done the trick and done it well. With all the noise in my house, I failed to recognize one thing about Kitty Bill. He does not nurse quietly. It sounded like I was suckling an army of pigs, and oh how the heads began to turn. It's pipe-organ music, and so you would think that it would drown us all out, but it wasn't like that at all. Oddly enough, every cough, sneeze or gulp reverberated just as much as the music did. The room was designed to carry voices, after all, and it was designed well. You could hear a pin drop AND the music, simultaneously.

This is when that coveted aisle seat in the back row would have come in handy for my quick and painless get-away, which was neither quick nor painless. Moonshine lasted until the middle of the next song before she started climbing around on the pew and finally squirmed out of Einstein's grasp and ran for the door where she could see me through the glass. But she couldn't get to me. Only one of the doors worked, and only from the inside. She screwed up her face and prepared to have a full-on shrieking when Einstein ran up the aisle and let her out into my arms.

While Einstein, Sunburst, and all the well-behaved children of others enjoyed the rest of the music, we crawled around the lobby and got to know it pretty well. Moonshine got into a debate with a woman about vegan diets, Kitty Bill fingered the bronzed-eyes of St. Thomas, and I let the irony of the day wash over me.

Pride cometh before a fall.

It was just another humbling moment, one of many, where I'm reminded that no, my kids aren't all that.

Inspiration and the Flute

The thing we were most taken with at the Native American camp was the flute performance by William Whitefeather. Sunburst has been learning to play a Choroi pentatonic flute for a month or so now, struggling through her third song, and it was neat for her to see real flute playing in action-- on a stage and everything.

I love the sound of the Native American flute. It's different than what Sunburst is learning to play-- the Choroi pentatonic makes me think of angels, sort of a hovering, airy sound, while the Native American flutes seem to sound more earthy, sweeping, and I don't know, connected to the whole of life. Maybe that makes sense to someone besides me?

Anyway, I asked Sunburst to watch Whitefeather's fingers, particularly, to help her get a better sense for what he was doing. At one point she turned to me and whispered, "Hey, I know that song!" He was playing a Native American lullaby off of "Under the Green Corn Moon," a cd that we have listened to on and off since Sunburst was just a day old. Hearing something familiar like that sealed the deal for her.

When he was done playing and started to pack up for the day, Sunburst went up and asked to see his collection of flutes, and she let him know that she recognized the lullaby. He told her that he has the same cd, and he just figured out how to play it by listening to the song. Then she asked him to play a couple of different-looking (and sounding) flutes he had, including a triple- chambered drone flute that was a thing of beauty and wonder in itself, before she admitted to him that she's has been learning to play the flute at home.

Next thing I know he had handed her a small flute so that she could show him. She was shy and reluctant at first, but then she took it and began to play "Deedle Dum," the first song I taught her using David Darcy's wonderful pentatonic flute book. The fingering is different, but she quickly worked it out and then lit into the second song she knows. While she was playing, a group of older school children had materialized behind her, so that when she turned around she found herself giving a surprise concert. Undaunted, she played the song a couple more times before thanking Whitefeather and coming back over to me with a huge grin on her face.

When we got home she took out her own flute and began to play around with it, not practicing the songs, but just trying out different notes and combinations-- happily playing with the sounds. She's used to hearing her dad and I play the pentatonic flute, and she hears her dad play the Native American flute and Irish Tin Whistle (among other things,) but somehow it's not the same kind of inspiration. Apparently Whitefeather struck some chord in her that we hadn't. Life is funny that way.