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I miss singing.

When I was a kid, my parents always sang in the car with us. Church songs, songs from Fiddler on the Roof, folk songs. Christmas carols. When my dad had rheumatic fever, he taught himself to play the guitar and then we would have family singalongs.

I didn’t do that with my kids so much. For one thing, their dad is a bit tone-deaf and that discouraged me. But I should have anyway.

It’s not like I gave up a career in music or anything. My singing voice is, well, adequate. I can carry a tune. I can harmonize. I am not a soloist, unless one counts shower-bellowing.

Music writes itself into our brains. I can hear the first notes of an old hymn that I haven’t heard in decades, and my brain calls up all the verses. I find myself whistling commercial ditties and camp meeting choruses. Maybe those songs helped form a framework in my mind. Maybe it is a positive thing that I can’t get the Gilligan’s Island theme song out of my head. Or the kajillion verses of “The Cat Came Back.” Or even the hymn numbers to those old hymns. That hymnbook isn’t even published any more. But somehow I’m pleased and comforted that I still know that Amazing Grace was number 212 in the red hymnbook.

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