Happy Birthday Mom!

My mother wanted her children to be the artists/musicians/dancers that she always wanted to be. She did everything she could to get us music and dancing lessons. I never appreciated her sacrifices until I had children of my own and realized the time it takes to bring children to their lessons and pay for them, too. I know Mom bartered a lot of those lessons, but that was still a sacrifice!

I love to sing, and I will never forget all of those early mornings when we got up as a family and sang "The Lord Bless You and Keep You", "Consider Yourself", "Do Re Mi", and I don't know how many other songs. The year Mom died, I taught my students a song from Sesame Street. The name of it is "One Small Voice", and the gist of the words goes like this: "One small voice can teach the world a song. Just one small voice, and the world will feel the song. If you feel the music, and if you believe the words, sing, and you'll be heard." I believe that these words sum up my mother's desire to teach all of her children to sing, and thus teach us to share those songs and words to others.

For those of you who don't know or don't remember, I teach K-2 general music. A few years ago, my principal asked that our school have a dance festival at the end of the school year. After volunteering to help the children learn the dances(I later made a note to myself - never volunteer for anything!), I helped to make the dance festival a huge success. Since then, (somehow) I have been in charge of the dance festival every year. I like to think that it is Mom's payback to me for stopping my dancing lessons so many years ago!

Today would be Mom's 80th birthday. She was a wonderful woman, and I hope that her memory lives on in all of our music!