glockenspiel

First it was a ukulele, then the bongos & now M has gone & bought X a glockenspiel. I delight in the idea of X growing up surrounded not only by music, but by the means to make it himself. Whether it is the drums or the guitar or the piano or the bagpipes -anything! -I am hopeful that something will seriously interest him eventually.

When I was a child, my parents humored my every whim when it came to music. At four I decided I wanted to play the violin, & so a tiny violin was purchased & the lessons began. I don't think I lasted for more than a year or so & my poor parents must have suffered through a hundred squeaking, ear-splitting versions of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" because that is all I remember playing. But by the time I tired of the violin (somewhere around 5?) I was already deeply interested in playing the piano. Again, I was enrolled in lessons that lasted for the better part of the next decade (skills which I still retain in some small measure). Then, somewhere around the 6th grade I decided I wanted to take up the clarinet -and so, no questions asked, my folks bought me a clarinet, signed me up for lessons & I joined the middle school band.

For me, music was second nature. My mother & all her sisters played & sang together growing up & on into adulthood. Music was just always a part of who they were -it was in their blood, a bloodline that I share. I don't know how or when I learned to sing -I have just always done it from the beginning. My mother wrote songs that she sung to me when I was a baby -songs that I now sing to my own son. And perhaps one day he will sing them to his own children too.

I hope to raise X in a similar environment -one that is always ringing with music of our own making. Oh sure, we will play our fair share of canned music -i-tunes is always in regular rotation & I am sure X already knows the entire Neko Case catalog. But I love the idea of him learning how to make a joyful noise of his own, whether it be by banging away relentlessly on the drums, or hammering the hell out of the new glockenspiel (but please don't poke your eye out with the hammer, X!).