24. MASKED MUSIC

Gracie

Joe

Gracie sat on my lap, her little booted feet resting on my shins, my arms encircling her waist. Joe sat beside us, laying his eight-year-old head on my shoulder. We watched and listened in the dark auditorium as their sister Anna performed in the Fort Herriman Middle School Concert Choir. In the last five years that we have been coming to concerts in that auditorium, it’s always been a challenge to find seats. This time we had our pick. We sat with a few dozen other families who were there to watch their kids perform. Each of the school choirs had a 20 minute concert, then they all left the auditorium and the next audience and choir came in and did their short show, and then the last choir came with their small audience. It was short and super sweet. I miss my kids and grands so much that I almost hyperventilate from inhaling so much when I am with them. This is the first concert these kids have performed for a year. One year ago this week their schools shut down with the pandemic. I love watching my beautiful Anna perform. I know her voice well enough that, even though she is doing her part to blend in the choir, my spirit hears her song. I just love her so much!

Anna, far left front., and the masked singers.

Tonight the music was muffled, like a horn section with mutes in all the horn bells. Nonetheless, it was lovely. Each person in the room, including the choir members, wore a mask. It’s the norm everywhere we go these days. I sat there, with my own breath steaming up my glasses as it was forced upwards from my mask. Gracie and Joe wore theirs as naturally as Joe wears his glasses. Gracie, in kindergarten this year, sometimes in person sometimes virtual, has never been to school without wearing a mask. We are missing a full grade level of toothless grins this year at Butterfield Elementary School. Still, she delights in going to school and is just so sad when it has to be closed down because of high Covid numbers.

Singing with a mask on is like
playing trombone with a mute.

As I watched those glorious middle schoolers trying to force the music through their cotton masks, I was struck with an idea that all of life feels kind of like we are wearing masks. Our souls are wearing masks, muting our full voiced spirits for a while. I’m in a death-pondering mood of late, due to the loss of a dear friend. I’m thinking of her being able to let her full delightful voice echo through the heavens now. Only we can’t hear it.

The thought of death being a release, like we get to rip the masks off our spirits, makes the dying part of life less frightening. Imagine the songs we will sing, all clear and harmonious, like the Salt Lake Valley after a spring storm. Clear, and crisp and fresh.

But the thing that really stirs me tonight is the tenacity and grit that compels a choir full of kids, and their determined director, to go ahead and give it their all, in spite of the pieces of fabric they are required to wear.