And All My Words Come Back to Me

Confession: I'm not big on elaborate bedtime routines. Baths and snuggles and wind-down yoga and twenty-two books and special stuffies and I'm tired just writing this garbage. I love my daughter so much, but I legit do not want to pull an all-nighter with her. I want her to go the F to sleep. Without me reading her that book, though.

Let me just channel Jim Gaffigan. [Insert awkward, breathy, this guy is funny, but maybe so annoying that I don't care voice here]: "You don't read to your child? What kind of monster are you? Did you know Mrs. Hitler didn't read to her child, either?!" 

Listen, jerks. I like to read to my girl during the daylight hours. When we're both better versions of ourselves and we can work together and have conversations and all that good stuff. And at night I can always be persuaded to read a book. But just one. And don't think for a moment that I'm offering. Because I'm not. No matter what the Nazi research reveals.

More Gaffigan voice: "But you're a writer, Kimberly! How can you instill a love of reading in your child if you don't let her badger you into reading fifty books to her at night when she gives zero shits about books and really just wants to stay awake as long as possible! How?!"

Guys. I don't know and I don't care. Not at 7 PM. At 7 PM I want to tell my daughter how much I love her, then go do something totally without her. Say whatever you must in your breathy voice, but that's the truth. And our unAmerican, truncated bedtime routine doesn't seem to have damaged her in the least.

Or so I thought.

In a seemingly unrelated parenting decision, we allowed my dad to sign her up for ukulele lessons a while back. Sure, it seemed a little hipster. But...like...my dad is 76 and my daughter is 7. If it was hipster, it was entirely unintentional. And this child loves the ukulele. She'll put up a weak grumble about her daily practice because that's what kids are supposed to do. But she's good (for her age) and she knows it. She even claps for herself after every song, which is so cute it gives me the giggles.

At first, the songs were standard beginner fare. Happy Birthday, Mary Had a Little Lamb, and the like. But very soon she tore through those kiddy book and her teacher started asking her what songs she'd like to play. 

Now I just want to say right now that we listen to current music in this home. All the stuff the cool kids are listening to. [Gaffingan voice.] "That sounds like a lie. I'm not sure they really do listen to new music." OK. So maybe not all the stuff. But enough of the stuff that it surprised me when her first pick was a John Denver song. John Denver, huh? I mean, OK. That makes sense for the instrument. But...John Denver? OK. Cool.

Next it was Peter, Paul, and Mary. Then the Beatles. Then back to John Denver. What was going on here? I don't even like John Denver! Where was she getting this stuff? Was my hipster dad feeding her a side of song ideas with her pre-practice donuts?

Then, when Carol King showed up in the line-up, it hit me like a ton a bricks. These were our songs. Our bedtime songs. I sing her one a night, always. I have since the day I brought her home. It's not a family thing—it's just me and her and song I can actually remember the lyrics to. Turns out, that's more difficult than you'd think. And old, folksy music is perfect. The songs are child-friendly, easy to sing, and have such straightforward rhyme schemes that even if you think you've forgotten the words, you stumble into them on your way there.

She could choose any song. She loves the Lumineers (she called them the llama ears), and can easily pick out which part she would play. But she doesn't. She heard the ukulele in a Vance Joy song the other day and I asked her teacher to print it. Ayana was not impressed. I printed a Moana song for her—one we love to sing in the car (but not at night). She'll pluck around, but it hasn't gotten much traction.

On mother's day, I got a ukulele too. Sometimes she can convince me to come out of my office and play with her while she practices. It's hard to play together because she's so much better than me. But she's patient and kind and always helps me find where my fingers should go. And when I'm frustrated because I can't make it sound like I want to, she lets me quit playing and just sing along. 

She could choose any song, and the songs she chooses are the ones I know the words to. The ones I sing to her when she's too tired to sing along, and the ones she sings to me when I'm too tired to be the mom I wish I was. She plucks them out of the darkness and strings them through our waking hours. The feeling of them so familiar that even if we've forgotten the words, we can stumble into them on our way there.