When I Grow Up

Recently my baby said to me:

"Mama, I hope you want to be a singer when you grow up, cause you can really SING!"

Now, I really do enjoy singing, and music has always been a passion of mine. Yet, I don't sing for or in front of anyone except my girls and only sometimes my husband.  With the girls it takes place in the car and usually most of the day in the house, since there's likely always some music playing.  So, they always get to hear me sing, most often to myself.  I don't recall what song had just concluded on the car radio when she offered her kind, humorously motivational remarks, but they caused me to reflect on myself, my life, my loves, and my manifestations to date.

I do come from a musical family and have always been surrounded by music and song. Given that she has mostly lived her short life way out here in the Pacific, baby girl doesn't really know that aspect of her Louisiana family.  My mother is a singer, as is my brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and play cousins as well.  One cousin of mine recently produced a gospel single. My best friend in junior high had/has a beautiful singing voice that makes you want to--in my memory of it--just lie down and forget the world around you (she also recently finished her PhD studies!).  One of my best friends in high school would always bless others with her talent and is now lead vocalist for a jazz band.  Most of those mentioned above typically sang in the context of the church, and while I was also a church choir member once upon a time, I surely wasn't bold enough to be a lead singer like the others, and my singing is more of the R&B/soul/neo soul (do people still say that?) variety.  

In junior high I did co-lead a song with aforementioned best friend (a song we wrote) at a 4-H event, and somewhere there may be a video of me singing a Lauryn Hill song as my senior project in an auditorium for a high school art class. (We had options to produce a physical piece, perform a dance, or sing a song for the teacher and class. Somehow I was bold enough that time to do the latter with one of the most difficult-to-sing Lauryn songs! But I had sang that song so, so many times in my room that I just had to do it out in the open.)

All that's fine and well, and it really has been neither here nor there.  But my daughter's recognition of that aspect of me, and the fact that she likes my singing is touching and brings up all sorts of thoughts of how she'll remember her mother.  If nothing else I hope somehow it encourages her to indulge herself in all the beautiful gifts that constitute her being, even if only for self-satisfaction.