Birthday In Review

Yesterday I turned 48. I usually don't think about my age. It doesn't seem relevant unless I have had to learn a lesson the hard way, I wake up with something broken that was fine when I went to bed or it happens to be the day when I am required to change the number on the countless forms I fill out on any other given day.
I have never been one to say I am younger than I am, quite the opposite. I usually tell people I am older than I am. Maybe I don't look so hot for 48, but I will rock out 64. I never understood the lying about one's age. Saying you are 35 when clearly you are anything but, makes me cringe. My candles on my cake yesterday were the numbers 100, my kids idea. If that is what they think, so be it, I have earned every year on that cake, mostly due to them, so let them eat cake.
I got a gift this year I have wanted for a while. Years ago, I used to play and sing music. It was part of my everyday life. I was a full blown choir and band geek. Music defined the moments in my life that were the most important to me. I performed before hundreds and a few times thousands of people, with a little nervousness, but now since I am so far out of practice having given it up so long ago, I can't sing in front of my family without having a full blown panic attack. Doing music seemed as though it were a past life. I was talking to my best girlfriend from college, Lovey, when I said I had gotten the gift because I wanted to start playing, and singing again. "I didn't know you sang..." she trailed off. No, I don't remember ever telling her, either. Once out of my small hometown, most people didn't know how much I loved to sing or play. "Yeah," I said, "I used to sing at everything, church, funerals, weddings, whatever was handy. I gave it up when I got married the first time." I heard the sadness in my own voice, and being my best friend she did too. Back then it had been a choice, now, I couldn't remember why that was.
Michael and I talk about everything. He knew I was unhappy having given up the one thing in my life that was only for, or about me. Much like my birth name, it was ingrained in me this love of music and now I wanted it back. I write in my birth name because it's mine, it's who I am to my very core. I love being married, but I question why we need to become someone else in order to do it. The tradition of acquiring your husband's name comes from a time when women were property, rather than individuals. We have romanticized it, in order to make it palatable, but I still feel as though we shouldn't have to if we don't want to. I took Michael's name because he asked me to, not because he expected anything. Being 38 when we got married, I had my own ideas of what I wanted for my future, so he and I talked about our expectations. I have the best of both worlds now, something I could never have imagined years ago. I am Michael's wife mind, body and soul, but when I write I am me, the me who showed up on May 9, so very long ago.
I took piano lessons in college. I had access to a piano at school and home so I practiced, a lot. I was never bored, because I had my horn, the piano, my favorite albums, church choir practice, the latest wedding music to rehearse, I had more than enough things to do to keep me occupied. As I married and had kids, I had no piano, no way to practice, I had nowhere to go with all of my love for music. Beyond singing my kids to sleep, I slowly began to lose my own voice. Looking back it was part of why Danny and I couldn't keep our marriage in working order. His voice was the dominant one, while I slowly shrank away to nothing. I couldn't sing in front of anyone now if a gun were held to my head. I imagine myself saying, "Go ahead and shoot me, this is not going to happen." My fear got bigger as the years went by, and I have sang in public once, for my parents 50th anniversary, a song during a roast I did. It took every ounce of courage I had, to stand up in front of their friends and our family to do that. I figured the odds were in my favor that they probably wouldn't make it another 50, so I was done. For my parents, I would do almost anything. I had to publicly put the "almost" in so my mom wouldn't use it against me.
I sing in front of the dogs. Given enough liquid courage, always the smart way to conquer fear, I might karaoke, but ultimately I keep my light under a bushel.
The gift my family gave me was an electric keyboard, a full size electric piano. I had asked, but I usually give them several options to pick from, so I didn't see this coming. I had pictured a little keyboard I could put on the dining table and peck around on. What I received was nothing short of a big chunk of me I thought I had lost forever.
I cannot play, hardly at all anymore, but what I can do is re-learn what I lost. I sat looking at the keys, playing scales, my left hand lazy, not wanting to play along, but I pushed through anyway. I screwed around with all the bells and whistles, literally there are bells and whistles, it's quite unbelievable, and I began to remember the girl who loved all things instrumental.
Every time I have a birthday, I look back over the year at my accomplishments and my failures. Not so different than New years I make resolutions of what kind of person I want to be in the future. I make a list of what I want to change, what I like about myself and what I may have to let go. I pulled out all of my old instruments, my guitar, my horn, and now the keyboard, and of course the voice I carry. I won't be posting videos on YouTube waiting to be the next Beiber, this is not about that. I just want the opportunity to live as a musician, because for all of my earlier life that is what I was.
As I sat in front of the piano, my son looked at me and said, "How are you reading music?" I looked at him stunned for a minute, "It's my second language, you never really forget." The boy still unbelieving that I could pull the rabbit out of the musical hat than said, " Yeah, but I play all the time and I can't sight read. You haven't done anything in years...that is really impressive." I smiled as I went back to hunting and pecking my way through the nursery songs thinking, "Ah, my first review, it's pretty good. Imagine what can happen if I practice, practice practice."