Sing, Sing A Song

Based on the title and picture above, you could be forgiven if you thought that this post was about the Von Trapp family and the Sound of Music movie. This post does involve a family with a lot of kids (ours) and singing, but not the big screen production musical sort.

Perhaps it had something to do with our Irish heritage and certainly the times were very different. This was back when the internet and smartphones were the stuff of sci-fi, and TV consisted of three channels and watching it was pretty much confined to the Wide World of Sports on Saturday and the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday. So this left lots of time for other things and in our family having sing-songs was one of those things.

Dad had a lovely tenor voice and even now I can clearly picture him standing in the kitchen, face turned to the sky, serenading us with Vera Lynn and Nat King Cole songs. When Auntie Lana was visiting a sing-song was sure to happen, and we would get treated to some beautiful harmonies especially when they sang Danny Boy and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. I always looked forward to those two songs. And it was only fitting that Auntie Lana sang Danny Boy at dad’s memorial service.

The other thing this brings to mind is what a great whistler dad was. He could whistle a tune like nobody else. If you didn’t know it you could sometimes mistake his whistling for a beautiful bird song. Dad was also the quintessential “whistle while you work” guy. Many a Saturday would find him in the basement working on a project and whistling a tune. You could gauge how things were going by the whistling – if whistling was happening things were going well, if it stopped there was a problem and you knew it might be a good idea to leave quickly, otherwise you might get roped into helping out in the basement.

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Mom came by her singing voice honestly. Her mom, our grandmother, was a regular variety show performer. She and her troupe of ladies were quite well known as a performing group in Edmonton among the senior set. Tilly, as she was known, was also an elocutionist in her younger days, performing dramatic recitations of poems and stories. As kids we would dutifully attend grandma’s performances but for us the highlight was the cookies and treats at the end of the show 🙂

Mom did not follow in grandma’s footsteps as an entertainer but she too had a lovely voice and loved to sing. One of the clearest memories I have is after Sunday dinners when the men “retired” to the den and we “womenfolk” would head to the kitchen to do dishes and clean up (what can I say, it was the 60s…). To break the monotony of this task, inevitably mom, or grandma would start singing old familiar tunes like Moonlight Bay and Let the Rest of the World Go By. I remember mom being good at all the harmonies and can still hear her sweet voice singing Sentimental Journey in harmony with dad.

It also bears mention that Big Sis also has a lovely voice and always participated in these after dinner clean up sing-songs. I, on the other hand, adopted a mouthing the words strategy as, sadly I did not inherit the family singing voice gene. And as for Little Sis, she did not participate in either the singing or the cleanup as she was literally too little.

Despite my lack of talent in the singing department, my daughter did inherit the good singing voice gene and has a beautiful voice. From a very early age she also channeled her great grandmother Tilly in the performing department – just ask her cousins and brother whom she would regularly coerce into performing impromptu shows at family gatherings. Through high school and university we were treated to many of her recitals and performances and so it was a natural fit for her to study performing arts in university and become a drama teacher. Over the years mom delighted in being able to attend some of her granddaughter’s performances and was one of her biggest fans.

These days, with family spread across the country and COVID hanging over all of us, it is nigh on impossible to get together, let alone have a family sing-song. Perhaps once we are all able to gather together again we could have a sing-song for old times sake. What I know for sure is

Betty (and Tilly) Would Love That

We plan to publish a new post every Monday, so stayed tuned for our next one entitled “Its Not Easy Being Red.”