A Song in My Heart

Friends, relatives, colleagues are always asking me how are the wedding plans? I give them the latest updates. We just ordered the flowers; beautiful, tropical flowers, with crystals because there’s got to be “bling” everywhere according to the bride. Sometimes, though, we do run into little obstacles. The quandary we are facing now is the song. One song. The one that Lindsay will walk down the aisle to. It should be a pretty simple decision to make, especially for one who has over 5,000 songs on her ipod. How does one even manage to accumulate 5,000 songs? I don’t even think I know 5,000 songs. I have one tenth of that amount on my ipod. The funny thing is that when I do decide to use my ipod, which is no longer a novelty, I usually can’t find a song that I want to listen to. Still, music is very important to me. Every Sunday morning my ritual with Mark is to read the Sunday Times while 104.3 is tuned to Breakfast with the Beatles. I also happen to come from a musical family. I grew up having seven uncles who were all very well known musicians. Music was always the backdrop of my life. I can remember playing my music, either my 45’s or albums on my record player, that ancient machine that you were able to place a stack of records onto. If I close my eyes I could hear the first album plop down on the turntable and the needle sizzling before the song began to play. I would lie on my multi-colored shag carpet and listen to “Let it Be” ten times, sometimes; over and over again. I couldn’t get enough of it. Eventually I turned to my Elton John albums, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell; and then in my “dark” period, I played Laura Nyro. Name a year and I could probably name a song for it. For example- 1968, MacArthur Park- one of the longest songs in history. I was in sixth grade. We were into boy/girl parties. MacArthur Park was for slow dancing. And if you happen to be dancing with a boy you didn’t like while MacArthur Park was playing, it felt like that song would never end. Although there were the songs that you never wanted to end. I remember, in Jr. High, going to my friend, Estelle’s house and listening to Carol King’s I Feel the Earth Move repeatedly. It seems like anytime I like a song, I become obsessed with it. Even when I played the piano and learned The Rainbow Connection, it became the only song I played.

I dreamed of becoming a singer- at first, a folk singer. So I took guitar lessons from my uncle Ruby; cut my nails short and let my hair grow long. After folk singing became passé, I abandoned my guitar and concentrated only on my voice. My Uncle Oscar, who played the piano, would help me, accompanying me from time to time. However, he was not as nurturing and adoring as Ruby was. Still, it was a treat to go to Oscar’s house up on the hill in Roslyn, Long Island. I would sing while he played one of his grand pianos, which was in a room designed especially for two grand pianos that sat opposite one another beside floor to ceiling windows overlooking his woodsy backyard. This was a rare treat for a girl from Brooklyn. I could still picture myself singing, feeling hopeful that I could be the next Barbara Streisand (another Brooklyn native), while my very talented uncle played so effortlessly and beautifully. One time, when I finished a song, Uncle Oscar, looked up at me, very dreamily, a smile underneath his enormous grey handlebar mustache and said, “Aren’t I wonderful?” (You can’t make this stuff up.) He was very proud of himself; I never did know how or if he was proud of me, though.

There was a time I ventured outside my family of experts to pursue voice lessons. I studied with an opera singer in Manhattan. However, I was tired of commuting to the city so I found a professional male singer in Brooklyn who performed in the Yiddish Theater, who also believed that good vocalists have to tighten their buttocks in order to hold notes for an extended length of time and he would have to periodically check to make sure that my tush was tight while I sang those long notes. (You can’t make this stuff up.) I naively asked him if my boyfriend could come to watch one of my lessons and he told me that it wasn’t a good idea because he wouldn’t understand about the tightening of the buttocks strategy and it might confuse him when my voice teacher was feeling my ass. I told my parents nothing about this, except that I decided to quit taking singing lessons.

These experiences did not sour my love for music, though, which I passed down to my children who are always singing and dancing. Lindsay followed in my footsteps and is a singer now, as well. She even sang in the double grand piano room in Roslyn, while my cousin, Neil, Oscar’s son accompanied her. This is why it is so important to find that perfect song for her to walk down the aisle to because Mark and I will be walking by her side, which is the Jewish tradition. This is when we “give our little girl away”. This is when we say goodbye to our “child” and acknowledge she’s a woman. This is when we get welled up with emotion because that walk is one of those snapshots in one’s life that takes your breath away, when you reminisce. This is when we have our “Hallmark moment”. Hence, I feel that I should have some influence in choosing the song because it is my moment, too. Naturally, I don’t want to take away from Lindsay and Scott’s thunder. I just wish we could find a song that captures the essence of how everyone feels; one that might bring tears to your eyes, but not gut-wrenching sobs. One which has to be in one of the 5,000 darn songs that Lindsay has on her ipod; not to mention that Scott, who also DJs on the side, most likely has 10,000 songs. Whenever we think we have it, there’s a lyric that vetoes its possibilities. Martina McBride’s There You Are was a strong contender until it mentioned something about an angel and we didn’t want to consider what that might imply. Surely, we will find one. Knowing our history, knowing my uncles- Lindsay’s great uncles, knowing that music runs in our veins. There’s got to be a song that justly accompanies that moment when we give away the girl who grew beneath my heart to the one whom her heart adores. There’s got to be a song…or else,

I might have to write one myself.