Sweet Harmony

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and we enjoyed a relaxing day at home, all three of us engrossed in library books and lounging in pajamas in our front room, surrounded by coffee and dark chocolate. The wild aroma of slow-cooked pulled pork filled our home, and the beautiful spring snow gradually shrunk outside our big living room window.

We woke up to about 10 inches of heavy, wet snow, and it was unfortunately too much for some of the trees up and down our street. Thankfully our tree survived, after Ryan trudged out in his boots around midnight and shook the snow off each branch. Since we didn’t go anywhere yesterday, this morning was my first chance to look at the neighborhood, and I was saddened as I drove, seeing all the broken branches hanging down. So many ruined trees. A tall, old willow filled the street and blocked a cul-de-sac, so city employees were out there dragging it away at 7:00 this morning. And just like that, the landscape of our neighborhood is changed.

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On Saturday morning, Ryan took Ryley along with him for a few errands he had to run. They were listening to the radio, and she was singing along, as she always does.

“When Mommy and I are in the car, we always sing along with the radio. I try to find the harmony, and I can usually find it for one note. But Mommy? She can sing the harmony for the whole song!”

Ryan said there was so much love and admiration in her voice.

I remember feeling that same way about hearing my parents sing.

And my mom tells stories of how, as a little girl, she sat at her piano with a hymnal, trying to pick out the alto part for each song.

I took Ryley’s comment as a compliment—a rare view of myself through my little girl’s eyes. But it seemed to me to go deeper than that…to be a perfect metaphor of what motherhood truly is: the effort and goal of every mother to let her life sing for her children, and for that song to be a pleasant, harmonious sound. And because our kids love it, they mimic it, one note—one moment—at a time. With careful listening and practice, maybe they too can make their life a beautiful song.

More than just with the radio, though, she’s listening carefully to the things I say, to my musings loud, to my spoken inner thoughts, to how I treat people, to how I talk about people. That’s scary, actually. She hears my mistakes, my sharp and flat notes, my imperfect attempts at harmony.

But then, she hears the good notes too and she remembers them, and with every song, she tries to vocalize that harmony stored in her head and in her heart…the harmony she’s heard me sing a thousand times.

What a very important job we have. :-)

May our harmony always be sweet. And may it always last through the whole song.