HEART SONGS

I saw the cutest site last week and it stopped me in my tracks. I was boating to the car to go to a creative choral music course at Fleming’s School of the Arts, and half way down there was something I had never seen on this lake but so desperately yearned for. My heart opened and sighed when I saw it was true. We had two baby loons for the first time in a very, very long time. What made this so wonderfully remarkable was that for the last five or six years, we’d only had one loon on our lake. I’d get all excited when a possible mate would come and hang around for a bit then would be disappointed when it didn’t last. What a delight to see this family together with the two little ones riding on the mom’s back. I had of course seen this in photos and videos, but here? It was pure joy.


A few days later, my heart sunk when I realized there was only one chick left. It was so sad. It was so very sad, it choked me up.

Feeling feelings. This is rather new to me. I tried for a long time to avoid them because I didn’t know how to deal with them; they overwhelmed me. But then we read Townhouse by Trish Cohen in our book group and there was this character who was agoraphobic and got dizzy when he went outside. A young neighbour finally asked him, so what’s the worst that would happen if you got dizzy? He thought a while and then said he’d fall down. Was that so bad? I remembered that scene when I was feeling sad about something and decided to not turn it off but to actually just feel it anyway. What was the worst that could happen? I’d cry? I’d cry a lot? And so I did. I pulled the car into a parking lot and let out the suffering. I just let it out, and out, and out. And I survived. I can’t even remember now what the grief was, so I guess the tears washed it away.

As a young child, I learned to hold my emotions in. My father had a weak heart, and I believed he would die if I was too expressive, so I numbed my emotions with food. The concept of emotional intelligence was decades away from being understood as was the knowing that it was best to relate rather than react in difficult situations. Growing up, numbing and being physically active were the tools I had to cope.

As a result, I had learned to think in terms of black and white: people were either angels or demons. Things were either good or bad, up or down, hot or cold. In music, which was also an escape, songs were either in major or minor keys – happy or sad.

In the choral singing class, we were introduced to a number of songs and since it was level 1 and we only had a week together, they were kept fairly simple. Onawa’s Waltz, Honey Don’t Cry, and J’entends le Moulin were fun rounds in two to four parts that were entertaining, as were the songs with two parts each having different words. What I noticed though, when we sang harmonies, three groups singing the same words but different notes, there was a richness created that was transcendent. Somehow we were separate and together at the same time.

In the song Honey Don’t Cry, Beverley Glenn-Copeland wrote: Honey don’t cry, baby don’t cry we all get together in the by and by, that’s what the soul dreams of. Honey don’t dry, baby don’t cry, we all come together in the by and by, pulled to the heart of love. ‘Get together’ and ‘come together’: so subtly yet significantly different in meaning. Getting together was about all the individuals being in the same place, but coming together was about joining open hands and hearts. Emotions had to be free to express themselves for this to happen. Before my big cry in the parking lot, I could only get together. Now I could come together: relate, harmonize. Feeling pain wasn’t so bad; it brought me closer to those I held dear and made my back a comforting and reachable place.

Black or white: angels or demons. Maybe we’re more like the loons - both black and white – coming together as best we can to raise our families.