Feeling Good was Good Enough for Me

There are a few things I'm good at in this world, and singing isn't one of them. I can dust the heck out of a living room (although I typically choose not to), I can keep a number of different types of house plants alive, I can shuffle cards really well, and I can make a meal appear out of thin air no matter how many weeks it's been since our last trip to the market. But darn it, I cannot sing.

If you think my lack of talent stops me, you're mistaken. I love to sing. I almost don't mind traffic (that's mostly a lie) because it gives me more time to belt out the tunes. In fact, when I'm sitting next to someone forever in rush hour, I'm not at all above rolling down my window and singing at them. Judging by the smiles and laughter, I've found it to be a mutually beneficial way to pass the time.

Now because I know I'm not America's Next Top Singer (is that a show? I'm not sure that's a show.), I didn't really worry when my surgeon told me my vocal chords could be damaged when he removed my thyroid. I'm sure if I'd thought about it, I'd have tried to sing the national anthem at one more Nuggets game; but at the time getting the cancer out kind of occupied the ambitious part of my brain.

So what happened was a bit of both. I got a little of the cancer gone and I got a little bit of damage to the ol' pipes. Neither are as notable as one may have hoped about the former and feared about the latter. But what's done is done and here I am, a little less cancery and a little more raspy.

I've never asked anyone about it, but I'm guessing most people don't notice the change in the quality of my voice. I think I just sound like me in the morning except for all day. Sure, I get asked if I'm tired a lot. But that could be so many things! Not the least of which is that yes, I am in fact quite tired.

But I notice. I noticed right away in my bedtime routine with Ayana, which is to sing her one song of her choice. I'm not getting into those crazy seven stories, nine songs, and fourteen cartwheels bedtime routines. Remember? I'm tired. She gets one song. Sometimes she'll sneak in an Itsy Bitsy Spider or a Twinkle, Twinkle. But mostly she's incredibly cool and requests folksy songs that we both love.

Until she was somewhere in her threes, I sang her You Take a Stick of Bamboo every night. There was no other song for her. Ayana was such an easy replacement for Hannah that I'm sure she thought the song literally was her song. Then she moved on to Carol King's Where You Lead. Who can argue with that kind of taste? She went through a Blowin' in the Wind phase after the 2016 election, and she'll occasionally change it up with Andrew Gold's Thank You for Being a Friend. She likes that one so much she taught it to her kindergarten class and they sang it at graduation. So many tears!

The thing is, singing is our thing. It's the one routine that hasn't wavered since the day I brought her home. Before I went into isolation for radiation, I recorded us singing all our favorites so Eric could play them for her while I was gone. I actually put recorded evidence of my terrible voice into the hands of my husband, who I kind of trust but not totally. That's how much our songs matters to the both of us.

So I'll admit I've had a hard time ignoring that the voice I hear now isn't the same voice she grew up with. At the end of the day, it's often so shot that I just whisper the words in her ear rather than attempt to sing them. I've never admitted it before because I'm aware it's a ridiculous vanity--trust me, I never had a voice to mourn--but somewhere inside, I've been a little raw about the loss.

Or I was a little raw until this morning, when I was taking Ayana to her friend Chloe's house. We're in the car and we're going to sing because that's what we do, right? And by some miracle, Me and Bobby McGee comes on the radio.

I love me some Janis Joplin; but you don't hear her every day, you know? Turns out, I hadn't heard her in more than a year and some change. Because all that time I'd been quietly pining after what I thought was a loss, but was actually a brilliant transformation. Raspy voices were made to sing Janis Joplin songs! Not well, mind you. I'm still as far from a singer as I've ever been. But you'll just have to trust me--until you pull up next to me at a stoplight--my Me and Bobby McGee game is on point.

Maybe it's my spirit song because it takes a little damage to really dig in to those lyrics. Physical damage, sure. But I think it might take a bit of a raspy soul to convince the audience that freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.