Music Appreciation
My 16 month-old daughter is a great musician, not because she likes to strum my guitar or bang on my drum, not even because she likes to bang pot lids in a loud rhythm against the kitchen floor. She is more a musician of the synthesizer sort. In a rare moment of quiet in our house, my daughter’s favorite thing to do is line up all her toys, not the wooden ones that I personally selected based on their long-lasting and imagination-provoking qualities, but those “other” toys that were purchased for her as gifts by well-intentioned relatives. These “other” toys have their own special musical qualities such as neighing horses, trumpeting elephants, rhyming children or, oddly, singing women who sound like they were rejects from the Romper Room.
On their own, these toys are not music enough for my daughter the maestro. Instead, she lines them up and begins her orchestration, stomping, pressing, pulling, pushing or whatever mechanism necessary to set off their songs until, like a symphony, they are playing all at once, a choir of Chinese plastic reminiscent of mating circus animals being provoked by a squad of cackling clowns. I want to tell you that I stand over her smiling with pride at her ingenious musical mechanics, but then I would be lying.
Usually, in these moments, I am doing one of two things: either stuffing my head under a pillow and chanting the mantra, “Smile, I am peace,” or calling my husband into the room to watch her while I “use” the bathroom. What? Don’t pretend like I’m the only parent who hides from their children in the bathroom. Right? I’m not, am I? Am I?
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By Leanne, February 23, 2009 @ 9:35 pm
This is great, I can picture it clearly… Fortunately, we have avoided any mechanical noise-makers thus far, but Asha more than makes up for the lack of noise with her unbelievably LOUD voice.