MUSIC IN OUR LIFE
6月
11日
"Household moments expressed with music"
This morning, I was awakened as I heard the girls 12 & 14 getting ready for school singing “TIME”, made popular by NF. Now, they have just come in the door after being dropped off by the school bus at the bottom of our hill. 12-yr-old is at the piano accompanying herself as she belts out her own compositions.
The music tells me she had a good day at school and the distribution of endorphins in our home is energizing! Last night, “all-quiet” was announced while 14-yr-old taped a practice of “BLACKBIRD” on her guitar. I sometimes suggest, “I would like to hear more practice.”
She answers, “Grandma, I practice in my head.”
I respond, “I agree with some of that because I know the story about Korean prisoners of war who had practiced their golf game while imprisoned.” They were known to have done well subsequently.
I am delighted to live with these benefits that are core values in “making life better”. It is also my life path and purpose to pass on our stories of the value of music that has been maintained in their heritage.
One of the first piece of furniture my husband, Sam, and I bought, 60 years ago, was the upright piano in the picture. Sam saw the advertisement in the newspaper. At that time, we were spending $15 a week on groceries and barely paying the mortgage on our first house on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. I thought it a luxury we couldn’t afford. Neither one of us could carry a tune, but I had a couple years of piano lessons when I was in high school. Sam thought it was important and made the purchase.
Music was not my forte, but I had grown up with a father who could play his violin, musical saw and sang in the church choir. He delivered groceries to farmers in the Eastern Oregon, Western Idaho’s rural area where many of us with Japanese Heritage started life over after being incarcerated during WWII. He could often be heard belting out his favorites like the Mikado, “Miya sama, Miya sama,” as he loaded his van with groceries and Japanese menu staples from the ONTARIO MARKET.
Dad’s van had a four-note musical horn. He played a tune as he entered his customer’s farm driveway. The wife was often out in the field helping with farm chores, would hear the tune and come in to buy groceries out of his van.
Sam didn’t ever hear his dad play his mandolin as he was growing up, but we have the instrument and can only guess the story of playing in a band in the 1920s is true.
Because of this heritage, Sam and I chose music as a discipline for character building practice and education for our two daughters. It is one of the most important parenting decisions we made and now I am regaled with “life’s moment expressed through music”!!!
