They Probably Would Have Kicked Us Out of Austria

Me and Cap'n Firepants

What is the Sound of Music, really?

Is it a song on the radio that skips over half the words because they are “inappropriate”, or your dog barking in his pen outside nonstop because he knows you are in the bathroom at the back of the house and he wants your attention NOW, or your daughter belting out “Do Re Mi”  100 times an hour?

Our daughter, Dimples, has moved from her Mary Poppins obsession to a Sound of Music one.  She has gone from singing a declaration of women’s rights with “Sister Suffragette” to begging a boy to take care of her in “I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen.”

Her voice is not bad, so I don’t mind the singing.  But the repetition may kill me.  Although I was able to giggle a little when she loudly sang, as part of Edelweiss, “Bless my hometown forever” instead of “Bless my homeland forever.”  Something about singing an homage to San Antonio, Texas, makes the whole song a lot less poignant.

Our entire family has taken to humming random pieces of the score as we wander around the house.  Sometimes, we run into each other in the kitchen or hallway and happen to be humming the same tune, so we break out into song together.  O.K. Maybe that’s just Dimples and me.

We are such dorks.

I was like Dimples as a child, discovering new music that I would then wear out by replaying and singing along to until I found a replacement. I used to get angry with my father who, when I started singing in the back of the car, would turn the radio volume up to drown me out.

The other day, Dimples started singing along in the back of car as I drove, and I reflexively leaned over to turn the radio volume up.  I froze.  What the heck was I doing?  And then I realized, I wasn’t trying to drown her out.  I wanted her to be a part of the song as though it were a duet.  And I even joined as a backup singer in the parts that I knew.  That made me feel better about my dad’s radio blaring commentaries.

Until I remembered that when I was a kid, I was never singing the songs that were playing on the radio at the moment.  Just my own repertoire of “How Much is that Doggie in the Window” and “Que Sera, Sera?”   So, I’m pretty sure my dad was trying to send a not-so-subtle message about my repetitive serenades from the back seat whenever he cranked that dial to the right.

It’s clear to me that Dimples and I were meant to be born to the Von Trapp family, to live out lyrical lives of harmony and happy endings.

My dear husband, Cap’n Firepants, is our own Captain Von Trapp,  slightly charmed by our impromptu concerts in the kitchen, but mortified at the thought of us performing in public.  I can’t imagine what he’s so worried about.  I was in the All State choir back in the day.

Dimples is alive with the sound of music

With songs she has sung for a thousand hours

Dimples fills my heart with the sound of music

Even when she’s not taking showers.

 

My heart wants to dance when she plays Kinect

On a gloomy winter day.

My heart wants to sigh when she has to correct

Every word that I say,

 

To laugh like a girl when she trips

And falls over dogs on the floor

Who bark through the night

Or knock down the walls with a snore.

 

I live in our house, and I’m never lonely

I know I will hear what I heard before

Again and again and again there’s the sound of music

And we’ll sing once more.