Your Song

When I was a kid, my Mom had a song for all three of her kids. Each was a old folk ballad she'd sing to get through the long nights with babies. I remember one family trip in the car when she sang my oldest brother's song while we drove through the long night. He was 16 years old, but that familiar old lullaby put him right to sleep.

Now I've got my own kids. I tried my hand at the lullabies I grew up on, lots of them local folk ballads and they just didn't feel right. Gradually over the past few years my husband and I have found songs for our children, songs that they love and that we love to sing with and for them. Songs that comfort them in sickness, sleepiness, or just need of us. Much to our delight, four unique songs became their favourites.

Biggest girl, our Princess par excellence, took an immediate liking to this song. Cinderella is her favourite princess, so of course she'd love this song. She likes to sing it to us now, which is a real heart breaker:

Biggest boy gravitated immediately to one of his Daddy's favourites, Beautiful Boy by John Lennon. Although we do love John Lennon's original, the boy prefers the cover from the Amnesty International album Instant Karma, sung by Ben Harper (that's my boy!). Every night, he begs us to sing this at least once, but especially when he's feel low. He's even got little hand gestures for certain parts to illustrate it.

Our almost three year old boy also loves to hear Beautiful Boy, but his favourite song has become the short but sweet "Love you Forever" from the Robert Munsch book (one of his favourite books too). He calls it the dragon song (which he tells us he is) because the first time we heard it sung was on a very old TV special that they have on Netflix. What could be better than being told that you'll be loved forever, liked for always, and my baby as long as I live? So sweet.

Baby girl's song was chosen for her. Maybe as she gets older she'll change her mind, but somehow I doubt it. When I was still pregnant with her there was one song that always made her dance in my womb. Once she was born, that song carried both of us through the early sleepless nights of breastfeeding. Now that she's a year and a half, it's the song I sing to her as we dance our way through the days. It's Bob Dylan's "If Not for You", although the version I'm in love with is the cover by Derek Webb and his wife Sandra McCracken.

And finally we have a song that my husband and I love to listen to over and over again. It's kind of our theme song for this stage of our life as a family. Every time it comes on I want to gather up all my little blessings and give them lots of hugs and kisses.

Good Taste in Popular Culture

I grew up in a family that didn't really follow the popular music scene (except my eldest brother, who even then had rather moderate taste). We listened to our national radio station, lots of classic albums (okay okay, my Mom may have owned a few Cheech and Chong albums we laughed our way through), oodles of musical theatre, and a large quantity of folk style music from the 60s and 70s. The first CD I ever owned was the soundtrack to Evita (still listen to it today). I got more excited about a newly discovered Sondheim play than whatever New Kids or Boys to Men album had dropped. That wasn't because my folks didn't want us to listen to pop music or had some sort of ban of what was "cool", it was because that wasn't their taste, and they didn't have a problem commenting on the style, or lack there of, of whatever we listened to. My folks could be swayed by a band that played with real talent and style (the Barenaked Ladies were a great example), but if it was garbage, they had no problem telling us. They didn't stop us from buying whatever music we wanted with our own money or even as gifts, but they instilled in us an ability to see past what the radio was telling us was "good" to figure out what was music written by truly talented musicians. We are a musical family, and we wanted our music to be well written, lyrically deep, and to have staying power. That's probably why the Beatles had more play in our house than the Backstreet Boys. In the 90s as so much of the music was overproduced, ghost written or lyrically just atrocious, I was glad that I had been raised to have good taste rather than popular taste.

The same went for books. Most of the books on my parents book shelves today are the same authors as they were back in the 80s. Usually if they're purchasing a new book it's a replacement of an old copy that has become so worn through multiple readings it has fallen apart. Books are like friends, to be treasured and visited often. Lots of great, classic sci-fi, fantasy, military, thrillers, and of course the English classics. Besides my Dad's ever growing collection of Clancy books, the most modern thing on our shelves was probably by Hemmingway. As a kid I read all the usual suspects (included my fair share of Scary Stories anthologies and Judy Bloom books), but side by side I was making my way through a fair collection of books I would still read today. In grade 2 I read the Hobbit for the first time. I tried the Lord of the Rings the next year but found it boring. My University degree in Classics proves not much has changed, except that my reading selection has gotten even older and dustier. I am a great troller of used book stores. Lately I've made my way through some new writers whose epic stories (yes, the word epic is deserved here) and easy reading stories have kept my attention. I'm talking about the Harry Potter series, anything by Jasper Fforde (get out and read some of his well written, clever books!) and the Hunger Games more recently.

I think one of the greatest legacies my parents taught me wasn't to stay away from culture, for better or for worst, but to have real discernment for what I choose to spend my valuable time on when I go out and seek it. I have fallen prey to some awful music over the years, but when I'm in the mood for something that speaks to my souls, I will always turn to the Beatles, James Taylor, The Mamas and the Papas, and other such solid, beautifully written music. The same goes for books. I might get a thrill out of some hilariously trashy reading once in a while, but after reading A Moveable Feast, I'm reminded that real literature is something you become emotionally attached to. It's a book so well loved and leafed through that it passes from hand to hand, generation to generation, never losing its charm. So, while I won't keep my kids from reading whatever the latest incarnation of popular music or literature is out there when they're old enough to enjoy it, before I throw them into the fray of pop culture, I hope to have built in them the same good taste and critical eye I was gifted with by my parents.