With a Voice of Singing

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

After several years of pestering, when I was 12, my parents bought me piano. It was a pretty beat-up, used upright some family didn’t want to take with them when they moved. I don’t remember what it cost, but now I realize what a huge sacrifice it was for my parents to bring it home when they knew we’d have to move it from assignment to assignment across the country. Dad and the owner loaded it into our trailer made out of the back end of an old Ford truck. After driving it across town, my dad carefully backed it into the self-standing garage behind our house in Dearborn. He needed help to move it up the stairs into the living room, so he figured he leave it there for a couple of weeks until he could get the assistance of some friends from the Elder’s Quorum. At the time our ward encompassed most of the city of Detroit, so it was likely to be a multi-hour trip for whoever volunteered.

He propped the tongue of the trailer up on our metal milk delivery box and pulled the garage door shut. Within 15 minutes, I’d brought a kitchen chair outside, set it next to the piano (which was tilted at a cockeyed angle toward the front because the box wasn’t tall enough to level the trailer), and I began to puck out notes. Now and then my chair would lose its suction, and I’d collide, chair and all, into the trailer’s front wall.

I wish I could tell you that was the beginning of years of accompanying hymns in church, choirs at school, and memorable recitals. But I can’t. I was never very good the piano. Now I recognize I have poor eye hand coordination, and I’m a bit ADD, so focus was a problem. But I had at least three exceptional teachers—in Detroit, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque—all of whom insisted I learn theory as well as keyboard skills. Because of them, I could lead a hymn with a bizarre meter like 17/12—if there were one. And I learned to love to sing.

I joined the Women’s Choir at BYU. At the time it was audition only, but I was writing music department reviews for the school newspaper, so it was a good political move for the director to give me a spot. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the seat next the student director, who once told me I had a terrible voice and shouldn’t have been let anywhere a choral group. (She later became a soloist at the MET; I figure she probably knew what she was talking about.)

But, as they say in Monty Python, “I got better.” One of my roommates was a music major and insisted that we all could sing. She brought home music, divided us into parts—our old rental housed 8 girls at the time, two for every part, which was serendipitous sign from Heaven, according to her. We sang Christmas carols for the neighbors every year, performed in Sacrament meeting regularly, and best of all, she exposed us to the beauty of music from the Old Masters. I still cannot hear “Schönster Herr Jesu” without weeping.

One remarkable Sunday morning, all the female students at BYU were invited to a special spiritual event in the Field House. We were asked to be in our seats one hour before the service began. I will never forget sitting in the midst of several thousand young women when someone across the room began an acapella hymn. Within minutes, every other woman in the room had joined in. Our voices rose in four, six, sometimes even eight parts for the 60 minutes until the meeting began. No sermon at all was needed that day.

When I moved to Kearns, there were dozens of young moms like me who missed the music of our college years. We organized a triple trio. During our time together, our combined members averaged 30 to 35 children between us. One Sunday morning when we were performing in another ward’s Sacrament meeting, my husband volunteered to take care of the babies whose dads were in Sunday meetings and unavailable for childcare. When I got home, he had my baby and the babies of two of my friends laid out on the floor in the bathroom changing diapers, assembly line style. Another Sunday, a friend and I slipped back into our Sacrament meeting after a performance in another ward. We were so impressed that our husbands had managed to get all of our combined 11 children dressed and to church on time–until her four-year-old daughter bent over and revealed a total lack of underwear!

But how we loved singing together. We sang a broad spectrum of music from pop to classical to Broadway, even a couple of original pieces written by one of our members who is now well known for her music church wide. We sang for our families, for local events, nursing homes, missionary programs, and anywhere we were invited. When one of our group lost a baby in a horrific crib accident, we were there to lend our voices as she and her husband mourned their little one.

Though I am now old and hearing the pitch is more difficult than it used to be, I cherish the voices of the high school students and adult choirs across the country who have found ways to perform together from their living rooms. They are carrying on a tradition of music which will enrich their lives forever, as it has mine. “With a voice of singing, declare ye this, and let it be heard. Alleluia. Alleluia.”