Surrounded by Friendship, Music, and Love

This is part two of a two-part story. You can read part one here.

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Swimming has always been one of my favorite things to do. I’m not competitive (unless I’m playing euchre with my dad), so I never swam on a team, but I enjoy floating around whatever lake is close by. The water feels so cool and delicious as I dive down underneath the surface. For a few moments the world is calm, even if the waves are big up above me. I’m immersed in a hidden place, like a lost city or a quiet cave. Nobody can find me in this ghost town beneath the waves. At the bottom of my dive I stop kicking my legs and float to the surface. I love the weightless feeling of the water carrying me like a baby back to the world of the summer sky. There’s nothing else like being immersed in the water.

I feel the same way about music. When I listen to a song, I like to be immersed in the music, surrounded by all the beautiful vocal melodies and harmonies and instrumental parts that come together to make something unqiue. Often I’ll get back into the car after running an errand and think, “I had the music that loud?!” I get so involved in what I’m listening to and I want to hear every part, so I keep turning the music up, up, up, until I loose all perception of how loud the sound actually is. It can be quite surprising after the quiet hum of the grocery store.

Singing in a choir fulfills this desire of mine to be immersed in music. Not only am I participating in the music myself, but I can also hear my fellow choral comrades singing along beside and behind me. The gentle accompaniment of the piano floats up from the front as I keep my eyes pinned on the director, who is keeping time and giving us reminders of how we can sing to our full potential. In a choir, everybody has an important part to play as we all follow the steady current of the music.

For the summer season, choir met once a week during the month of June, and then twice a week leading up to our show at the end of July. My voice was hoarse after every practice during the month of June. I began each practice feeling fresh and ready, like the first day of spring, and then by the end of practice I was somewhere during a summer drought, parched and fading. Choir practice also lasted until 9 pm, which didn’t help much. By the end of each practice my voice felt tired and I felt tired.

Slowly, steadily, I began to feel stronger and less tired after practice. I could tell that my voice had adjusted to being used for choral singing again rather than just belting Andrew Osenga songs in my car or hymns on Sunday mornings. I could also tell that my vocal control had improved. I was better able to sing quiet notes and loud notes without any breathiness or uncontained vibrato. I was treating my voice like the well-used instrument it is.

Something else magical happened over those two months of practice. We learned eight pieces and during the first sing-through they sounded like gibberish to me–a bunch of notes and dynamic markings that somehow fit together like a puzzle we were meant to solve together. It took me a few weeks of practice to see each song as a whole unit and to understand the vision of the composer of each piece. After a few more weeks I felt like I could, at long last, take my eyes off the music and focus them on the director. I had finally memorized enough of each piece to know what was coming next.

And then, like a monarch emerging from a pale green chrysalis, during our last practice before our performance, we had completed the puzzle. I knew each piece in an initimate way, like an old friend, and I felt comfortable with each piece, like I was an artist who had become part of my own paintings. It was such a lovely feeling. I also had the opportunity to contribute to one of the pieces we sang, “Together We Are,” in a special way.

The evening of our performance arrived. The weather was hot and humid, not atypical for Wisconsin in July, and the sun shone down on the bandshell along the river with an angry heat. The kids and my sister and I had a picnic in the grass before the show started, which included Jimmy John’s, fresh raspberries, and cranberry kombucha. The sun began to set over the river, casting long shadows on the dry grass. I gathered my music for our warm-up before the show, hugged the kids, and thanked my sister for being there for me.

We ran through the first few bars of each piece. I felt more and more nervous as time crunched toward “Together We Are,” the second-to-last song we were singing that night. And then, like a sudden bolt of lightning in a thunderstorm, the kind that rattles the windows and makes you sit straight up in bed no matter how deeply you were asleep, it was my turn to sing.

The choir parted like the Red Sea to let me pass through, and I heard a couple cheers erupt from the back row. I needed all the encouragement I could get; somehow us choir people know exactly when to cheer each other on. I held my shoulders high and tried to look confident, but inside my heart beat faster than the wings of a crazed hummingbird. I stepped up to the microphone. I felt like I was in a foreign country, far away from the safe space of the quiet high school auditorium I loved to hide away in. My choir director gave me a smile and cued the pianist. And then, I was singing, with the choir behind me, supporting me, and a field of empty grass in front of me. Having a solo sounded fun, in theory, but practically, it was terrifying. And I was so thirsty from the heat that my voice gave out part-way through. I thanked God that it was only practice and made a mental note to remember to bring my water bottle on stage with me during the performance.

I took my place in the second soporano section for our last practice song. Emily, my new-old friend, and I exchanged a look that said, ‘Whew, that’s over with.’ A few of the other women in my section gave me knowing smiles and patted me on the back. I could feel my confidence growing from a little seed into a timid sapling.

About an hour later, after multiple swigs of water from my water bottle, I repeated the same process. As I weaved my way through the choir and toward the microphone, my choir director gave me a sweet introduction. He told the audience how he had remembered me from high school, seventeen years ago, and that he was glad to have me back singing in one of his choirs again. Despite more cheering from the back row, and the touching introduction from my choir director, and all the encouraging smiles of my comrades, I was still terrified. The grass that had waited so long for an audience was now covered and overflowing. People sat on blankets, in lawn chairs, and stood in a row behind the seated members of the audience, and they were all staring at me. I mustered a shy smile at the audience and my choir director.

And then, I reminded myself why I was doing this in the first place: to serve God by serving the choir. Performing is a form of love. Even though I thought my heart might beat out of my chest, I did my best in that moment to love the audience and to love my fellow singers with all my voice could offer. And I think that, overall, my solo went really well. Would I do it again? Absolutely, so long as I have the choir standing behind me and the music all around me.

Photo: My view of the Saint Croix River from the Stillwater bridge