My mother-in-law Susan sang all the time to her children. What else could they be doing in this photo but the old favourite nursery rhyme (and did they then “fall down” onto the muddy beginnings of their new lawn?)
I married Oliver, the little boy with the blond curls and red coat but I knew his sister Mary, on his right, first. They invited me to stay one Christmas and I found a family who really did stand around the piano and sing carols, something I thought only happened in story books.
Music was a huge and fun part of all their childhood and teenage years. When the little local church needed a choir the family enrolled en masse. Susan and her husband Richard sang in a choral society but did not play instruments. But the three children were lucky and learned piano, guitar, violin, oboe and french horn between them. They sang in many school musicals and, free from parents, on slightly chaotic youth choir tours to Europe. There had to be a “no singing” rule at mealtimes because it got too noisy! They were never pressured to rack up successes but maybe because of that they did and they have all kept music in their lives in a big way.
Now the love of music-making has been passed down to the next generation and I have children, nephews and nieces who sing in school, cathedral, university and gospel choirs and play in string and jazz bands. It has taken them to Venice, St Petersburg, Amsterdam, Spain and so many other places. And me? Well I snuck into the family somehow as the only non-musician but when my son was a baby I joined a ‘take-all-comers’ choir for a year to see what I was missing. And although I have now gone back to being in the audience I did get a taste of what they have and believe me, it was worth it.
(As appeared in The Guardian Family Snapshot 26.09.2009)
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