THE SOUND OF SUNDAY DINNER

Smart phones are only smart if the people using them are not stupid.

For good or for bad, my life is changed by the palm sized computer I carry around everywhere I go. I totally get the potential, and the reality, of the bad. But I am blessed by the good it has brought to my daily life. I have preserved photographic images of people I adore, especially the ones in my bloodline. I feel connected with people who are far away, even if they only live across town, through the weaving threads of social media. I don’t have to personally memorize every phone number I need, and I no longer have a paper calendar on my wall with illegible scribbles covering every day. My phone sends out a little whistle to remind me ahead of time when I have an appointment. That’s super awesome. And I don’t have to pull over and look at an outdated paper map when I’m trying to find an address. For me, personally, my smart phone is worth every penny.

For years, I had to drag out a portable tape recorder when I was in songwriting mode. Because I don’t read music, and therefore don’t write it down, a recording device is indispensable as a songwriting tool. Because I am old, I have piles and piles of old cassette tapes, evidence of years and years of songwriting. First I used old fashioned cassettes. Then I went to the mini-tapes, then digital media on a small recording device. And now, I just press a button on my smart phone and I’m instantly in record mode. If I die, I bequeath to my posterity who is prone to songwriting, or my songwriting friends, the innumerable half written songs stored on my iPhone.

As I was working on a tune for a first-grade class I’m working with this year, I scanned the most recent recordings in my voice memos. There are the “brain” songs my first-grade teacher friend Becca and I are working on. There’s a ukulele version of I Am a Utah Man young Mary Snow requested to learn for a school play. And there are various versions of Clytie Adams recital songs I’ve written for this year’s dance recital. There’s the sound of my grand-daughter Ruby playing ukulele and singing the song she wrote for Reflections, in various phases of refinement as I taught her the tools of song writing. There’s a secret recording of my other grandkids; Anna singing in Sacrament Meeting last Sunday with Timothy accompanying her. So lovely, just so lovely. There is lots of music in my world, and lots of snips of it on my phone.

Down there in early January 2020, there’s a random recording with the title “The Sound of Sunday Dinner”. It sits on my smart phone just above my neice Brooklyn's mission farewell talk. I clicked the black arrow and listened from my spot on the family room couch. Through the mini speaker came a cacophony of sound, and an instant urge to sit back, to close my eyes and relive the goings-on of our house on a typical Sabbath evening. 

Against the aromatic backdrop of roasted chicken and freshly baked bread, I can see a swirl of people, each of them connected by that love-thread that keeps getting tangled up in this place. I hear the voices of my sisters, and my children, every one in their own unique keys and time signatures. My husband’s hands clanging dishes into the dishwasher. The drone of water pouring dutifully from the kitchen faucet. The throbbing patter of little feet on hardwood floors, and youthful laughter as Joe, Calvin and Walter chase each other through the circle of our living space. John must have picked up a guitar. I can hear notes starting to rise through the voices; clear, melodic tones from thin steel strings. Anna and Ruby are passionately discussing something or other, their adolescent voices sit half an octave above the old folks, and Parker lets out a long vibrato-driven note that pierces through all conversation until Sophie breaks out in laughter. With each word, and each musical voice, I attach the face of someone I love, and someone who loves me back. The Good Lord assembled this gathering of musicians. I thank Him for that. A couple dozen musical hacks, all untrained in the real art of life. We plunk away though, willing to play along even when we’re not quite sure what we are doing. These people I love play with and against each other, on the same stage. Even if they are all playing different songs, in different modes, the orchestration of their voices is so divine, so unmatchable, that it cannot be written down or replicated. Not by humans at least. It can however, be played back, over and over, on this little hand held device of mine.

Sunday dinner at our house - January, 2020. It’s just a bunch of noise to the untrained listener. 

But to me, it is music to my ears.