Celebrate With a Tuba

Today is the anniversary of the end of my very last pregnancy. Which is an awkward way to say Happy Birthday to the Music Man--our youngest child. Only he isn't exactly young anymore. It's been 24 years! Ack! How could so many years go by so quickly? It's especially ironic that I feel that way, because he was actually about three weeks late in being born.

All the rest of them were born on or very, very near the due dates. But, this guy just seemed to like it up there in Heaven, and stuck around for a couple of extra weeks. We were attending our oldest son's soccer games from August through November, and the other parents had started asking me early in the season when I was due. You could see their barely concealed eyerolling when it turned out I had nearly three more months to go. I looked ready to pop in September. To think that I wasn't going to be giving birth for 8 more weeks was just amazing to them. That's because they'd never seen me pregnant before. However, September came and went. Then October came and went, but I continued to stagger onto the sidelines and sit heavily in my lawn chair and then lurch back out of it and waddle back to the truck. Each game in November, you could just tell the other mothers were feeling so sorry for me. Finally, one Saturday--we missed the game!! Our little brother was born!! At last!! When our oldest son called his coach to say why we weren't there, his coach replied, "We were all hoping that's what had happened."

Well, he was a darling baby, a darling little kid, a killer baseball player, a math whiz and a kind and good friend to all. But who knew what lay in store during teen-agerhood? Music...

He started in band in 8th grade. He taught himself the entire 1st clarinet lesson book over a weekend. The band director was excited! Music Man had learned to read music during piano lessons. (Everyone in our family was treated to piano lessons.) But, somehow, in the gene pool, he and our oldest have been blessed with another skill in music of being able to hear it as no one else does. Both of them sit down with an instrument (piano, guitar) and just play whatever they'd like, in whatever key and whatever arrangement they feel impressed to use. Whew.

Then, Music Man was recruited to join choir in high school and another amazing musical talent was revealed. He can sing bass and with a perfect pitch. And in a couple of languages. And in multiple genres.

Luckily, he attended a high school where all this talent was appreciated and nurtured, and he availed himself of several opportunities in the community to be in musical ensembles. If you've never attended a Tuba Christmas concert---go! go!

So, over the years of high school, community college and up through the present, whenever there was a need for another person to play a particular instrument, he stepped up. Here's a partial list I've seen him play: clarinet, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, tuba, euphonium, kettle drums, piano, organ, snare drums, both stacked drums in marching band, electric bass guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, marimba, banjo. He was given the John Phillip Sousa award by his senior band director.

Then, after high school, he found opportunities in community musical theater, and college choral, and bar bands with his other brother! So, the performing just went on and on. I am their Biggest Fan.

So, I guess I'll quit now. But one problem of living with great musicians...they grow up and leave home and there you are living in a quiet house. Blah. So today, if you have a chance to raise a toast to a kind friend, a good brother, a terrific son, a valuable employee, and the best musician I know---you should drink it to the sounds of a Sousa March, played on a tuba.