The World Has Grown So Wide

I went to a viewing of the Met Live recently. On the drive home, I was thinking about a time in high school when I was preparing for the annual All-State Music competition and struggling with my song. It was an aria from an Aaron Copeland opera, The Tender Land, called Laurie's Song. It was well within my range, but it had some tricky intervals. And it's a very reflective piece, so phrasing is important. This is a funny memory because even though my mother was a trained opera singer, she never sang opera around us. Jazz, standards, church stuff. The closest she got to singing opera at home was Handel's Messiah. I had a voice teacher. Mom wouldn't interfere with that. And I would never ask. But she could see I was struggling. So, she got sneaky. She started by humming the melody in the car when we were alone. Then she'd ask me to sing a piece of it. And she would sing it back. And I could see what I was doing and what she was doing differently. And she taught me without teaching me. And we both pretended that we weren't doing what we were doing, because that's how it was between us then. Distant. Awkward. Each in our lane. But every now and then the lines would cross, and we would look the other way, even as we were grasping for connection.

My mom would have been 91 this year. Here is the song she taught me to sing.

"Once I thought I’d never grow tall as this fence

Time dragged heavy and slow

But April came and August went

Before I knew just what they meant

And little by little I grew

And as I grew,

I came to know

How fast the time could go

And now the time has grown so short,

The world has grown so wide.

Oh, it's so strange.

I'm strange. Inside."