I’ve told these two stories before but they’re important to me. They’re what I call “joy gems.” They’re touchstones and talismans.
One of the my favorite memories: I am about 4 and I am staying with my GrandAunt Ardelle and she’s in the kitchen making us dinner. I’m singing about that fact. When I stop, she yells, “MORE!” and I hear her laughing her laughter that was so full of love.
Another with her: I was about 13/14 (she would die when I was just 15) and we are visiting. I am sitting on the small settee with my mother, and Ardelle asks me what I think I want to be when I grow up. I know. My heart is full of it and has been full of it since I was so small, but I say, “I don’t know” and shrug in that teenager way, and she says, “OH! I always just thought you’d be a singer!” So offhanded, so SURE sounding.
I took those words and those memories and I stored them. Over the years, I learned to hide this part of me… this part of me that was pure and raw desire.
But I got too good at hiding it and the thing I loved most in this world — even more than dance (but thank God for dance) — this thing I loved most became this thing that I feared most.
I sing but only by myself in very limited and hidden ways.
And I lay awake at night some nights and I KNOW this is what I will regret.
I will regret this hiding of my voice… a hiding of a singing voice that results, of course, in a hiding of my larger truer voice in this world.
I think, even my writing voice is not yet my truest voice because I hide my song.
No more.
Monday the 14th at 5 PM I have a voice lesson — a half hour assessment to meet a teacher and see if we can work together and then I’ll start weekly classes.
Thinking of this MAKES. ME. WANT. TO. PUKE.
I want to cancel. I won’t cancel.
I think I might die. I probably won’t.
My heart races and my skin gets clamy even at the thought of this half hour on this coming Monday.
But I will go and I will report back.
And I want to know from you: what will be your regret? What small movement can you take toward eradicating it?