What fun to receive an invitation to join a senior’s choir, after a kind person named Jim read my November column ‘Just open up and sing’. I would be welcome to just pop into a group of singers who gather every Tuesday morning, he said. What have I got to lose, I said.
So after several Tuesdays went by before I was about to carve out time to join them, I headed off to the senior centre. It was on the drive over when I began to second-guess myself. I’ve never sang with anyone, besides the karaoke crew I wrote about earlier and, of course, our childhood garage band ‘The Junior Woodchucks’. Was I supposed to warm up my vocal cords like Lady Gaga did in A Star is Born?
I landed on quoting Maria from The Sound of Music: ‘Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you sing you begin with Do Re Mi.’ I was in pretty confident spirits when I arrived, until the zipper on my winter coat got stuck and I had to discreetly shimmy it down my legs and step out of it while Jim was introducing me to the choir. Then he surprised me by handing me a printout of the original column that led to the invitation in the first place, asking me to please read it to the group. So much for being incognito.
But they were all warm and welcoming. Jim was joined by the director to greet me and ask if I wanted sheet music to sing along with or just a page with the words. For some reason their attention reminded me of the old joke: Can you sing tenor? Ten or twenty miles away? Can you sing solo? So low and far away we can’t hear you?
Nonetheless, I opted for just the words, although I regretted that decision when I realized my long-ago piano lessons gave me enough rudimentary ability to read sheet music so as to give a clue to the melody. Without a hint of music to follow, I found myself completely lost after the first verse. We all seem to know the first verse of every Christmas carol, but not much after. I read the score along with the lady sitting beside me, and the first song was Christmas in Kilarney so I felt right at (my Irish) home. They were rehearsing Christmas carols to perform onstage at the Red Deer festival of trees, and wanted to be sure I got one of their choir scarves so I would match the rest of them at the concert.
I was immediately on high alert, of course! My commitment issues hit high on the scale, and I quickly asked them to not expect too much of me and to please let me earn the scarf. What if I couldn’t carve out any more time for Tuesday practices before the event, or carve out the courage to sing onstage at all? Not a problem, they said, before handing me plastic protective covers to save my word pages for the long haul. I… I… might change my mind, I said, about any and everything.
However, I went back for another practice and then joined them onstage! It did remind me of my recurring nightmare, where I’m about to go onstage in front of a huge audience and I don’t know what play we’re doing or what part I’m performing. But it worked out beautifully, and I got to stroll around the lovely venue afterwards. However, I did return my scarf after the performance, knowing the challenge formally joining the choir would create in my schedule at the moment. “No worries,” Jim said when I handed it to him, “Just remember to keep a song in your heart.”
Lovely parting words, indeed! I had taken a giant step outside my comfort zone and won! A new year is beginning – what unfamiliar thing will you allow yourself to try? Whatever it is, remember to keep a song in your heart!