Singing Soprano

April 28, 2016

I used to sing a little. Choral music. High school, church, a little college action. 

Tonight I have the house to myself and I was having a little singing and dancing party while performing the mundane domestic tasks that adulting requires and that I generally despise (laundry, dishes, blah, blah, blah). I was listening to The St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys sing "Let the River Run" (it's from the soundtrack of "Working Girl" and changed my life this way and that in my late adolescence). If you listen to the song, you will realize that the dance portion of the evening had paused. Anyway, as my invigorated soprano notes floated through the air alongside those of the men and boys of the St. Thomas Choir, my dog looked at me with fear and awe. She had been on her belly, but when the notes really gained high-pitched momentum, she sat up at attention and next I expected glass to break. And then I laughed like a mental patient and she looked at me quizzically and sank back to the carpet. 

In addition to the obvious my relationship with my dog is newsworthy takeaway is that we all do things when we are home alone that we might not do otherwise. In "Sex and the City," Carrie Bradshaw describes standing with saltines and grape jelly reading fashion magazines as her single person behavior. Everyone has their thing.

I love that I can walk around this lovely house and look at things in the shadows of night and think and hear creaks and hear my puppy’s concerned paw steps following me. But no one questions my whereabouts when I venture downstairs to swallow gulps of ice cold milk in the wee hours. No one is annoyed if I stand and stare out the window at 3am, listening to the train pass by in the distance, lining up my to-do list for the next day. If there are papers to grade in those hours in bed with the best of Netflix on, it’s not a problem.

Until a couple months ago I had never lived on my own. Let me revise that: I have two incomparable offspring to keep alive and love and make happy. Nothing in life matters more to me than that or them. And I’ve a support system of family and friends that love me and care for me and us more than I deserve. I am anything but alone. In fact, lonely isn’t anywhere on the playlist. It was before. It isn’t now.

The responsibility of being the only adult in a place can be overwhelming. If the laundry piles up, it piles up. The dishes, too. And the bills. The minutiae and substantia of life are mine to govern.

Works for me. With glee.

Maybe the standard for wanting to really live life with someone is finding the person with whom you can sing soprano and dance in the kitchen and jack up the dog with the high notes and eat saltines with grape jelly. Anything less certainly seems like a dip in the shallow end.

I prefer the deep end. Works for me. With glee.