My Mom's a singer.
Not your average sweet, smooth female voice. She's no Etta James. But she does what she can, and most mornings in my house you'll find her bopping around, singing something pertinent to the day. "School's Out for Summer" in June, "White Christmas" in December, "Easter Parade" in April. She also likes to jazz up today's music in her lolling, upturned croon: Celine Dion, Josh Groban, sometimes a little Mariah Carey. Anything and everything are up for grabs.
Mom sings in the kitchen, and she sings in the shower. She sings in the car and on the beach. She sings when she's gardening, she sings while she's cleaning. If you've been to the house, chances are you've caught a song or two.
It was therefore providence that my mom should come to Ireland. The Irish love to sing. They sit around in circles in the pub and sing and sing, one at a time. The elders sing as a rite of passage. Families sing together--sons sing with their mothers, the fathers dance, the daughter plays fiddle. And when my mom touched down in Dublin, ready for our week of travelling in the country, I knew there was music in the cards.
Oddly enough, though, the more we travelled, the less singing we heard. At first our rented rusty Fiat was full of the robust sound of my mother singing every Irish song she knew--Molly Malone, Wild Rover, Irish Eyes, Wild Irish Rose, Four Green Fields--but bit by bit the songs died out, and when we drove far into the heart of the country, the radio failed us and we silenced that, too.
The week passed quietly, without singing, without music. We searched each night for a pub with a ceili--Irish traditional music--session, but to no avail. The pubs were shushed and still. In fact, it wasn't until our last night in the country that we would finally find music.
It was after my mother and I had settled into our B&B room above the local pub in Clifden, in Connemara. We unpacked, then left via the stairs into the pub, and headed into the village for a nice dinner.
On our walk back to our room, something felt different. There was noise in the air--an energy. We'd been searching for it for a week, and finally it had come. Music. As we neared the pub, the rain began to mist down on us, through us, softening the glow of the orange street lights. The music grew louder. There was drum, there was...guitar? Synth? What was this? And as we rounded the corner to the pub, I finally recognized what I was hearing.
Springsteen. Born in the USA.
I couldn't believe it. I thought for sure Mom would be crestfallen--it wasn't Irish at all! But she smiled, then laughed. We headed up to bed, leaving the next day, my mother belting Springsteen from the passenger seat.
Not your average sweet, smooth female voice. She's no Etta James. But she does what she can, and most mornings in my house you'll find her bopping around, singing something pertinent to the day. "School's Out for Summer" in June, "White Christmas" in December, "Easter Parade" in April. She also likes to jazz up today's music in her lolling, upturned croon: Celine Dion, Josh Groban, sometimes a little Mariah Carey. Anything and everything are up for grabs.
Mom sings in the kitchen, and she sings in the shower. She sings in the car and on the beach. She sings when she's gardening, she sings while she's cleaning. If you've been to the house, chances are you've caught a song or two.
It was therefore providence that my mom should come to Ireland. The Irish love to sing. They sit around in circles in the pub and sing and sing, one at a time. The elders sing as a rite of passage. Families sing together--sons sing with their mothers, the fathers dance, the daughter plays fiddle. And when my mom touched down in Dublin, ready for our week of travelling in the country, I knew there was music in the cards.
Oddly enough, though, the more we travelled, the less singing we heard. At first our rented rusty Fiat was full of the robust sound of my mother singing every Irish song she knew--Molly Malone, Wild Rover, Irish Eyes, Wild Irish Rose, Four Green Fields--but bit by bit the songs died out, and when we drove far into the heart of the country, the radio failed us and we silenced that, too.
The week passed quietly, without singing, without music. We searched each night for a pub with a ceili--Irish traditional music--session, but to no avail. The pubs were shushed and still. In fact, it wasn't until our last night in the country that we would finally find music.
It was after my mother and I had settled into our B&B room above the local pub in Clifden, in Connemara. We unpacked, then left via the stairs into the pub, and headed into the village for a nice dinner.
On our walk back to our room, something felt different. There was noise in the air--an energy. We'd been searching for it for a week, and finally it had come. Music. As we neared the pub, the rain began to mist down on us, through us, softening the glow of the orange street lights. The music grew louder. There was drum, there was...guitar? Synth? What was this? And as we rounded the corner to the pub, I finally recognized what I was hearing.
Springsteen. Born in the USA.
I couldn't believe it. I thought for sure Mom would be crestfallen--it wasn't Irish at all! But she smiled, then laughed. We headed up to bed, leaving the next day, my mother belting Springsteen from the passenger seat.
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