Water music

When I was a little kid, my parents asked, “Music lessons or swim coach?” No matter what I wanted the answer was “swim coach.” From the time I was in grade one until I finished grade nine, three times each week, I swam at the John Innes Pool in Etobicoke. Usually my father accompanied me to the pool but, occasionally, the coach picked me up after school. Either way, it was homework and a snack in the back of the car and two hours in the pool. I had friends who endured music lessons every week and they often said how they envied my “fun time” in the pool. Really. Everything I owned smelled of chlorine. My eyes always looked bloodshot and my hair— well, let’s just say I don’t think a bathing cap ever helped. My fingers were always pruney and there weren’t very many excuses or reasons to miss a swim session. Six hours every week—unless there was a swim meet—and then extra time was spent in the pool streamlining the turns, improving the entry dive and pouring on “the speed” turned into 10 hours a week. It was what I knew. I didn’t complain because I understood my parents just wanted more for their kids than they had when they were kids.

Besides, we didn’t have a piano or any other kind of musical instrument, so music lessons were out of the question. “How can you practice your scales without an instrument?” We didn’t have a pool, either, but let’s just say that argument didn’t “hold water.”

Ironically, I fell for a guy who was possessed by music. Swimming, not so much. He was a university student who worked part time in a music store. He went to concerts and saw the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys. I went to swim meets and waved to my Dad in the gallery just before I dove off the blocks. LOML owned a guitar and knew how to play.

His parents let him take piano lessons. His family owned a piano.

I learned to love music that wasn’t the classical stuff my parents liked. Rock started to rock for me. I became more CHUM than CFRB. By the time LOML and I got seriously serious, he was still into music and I was all washed up with swimming, freestyle flip turns and chlorine. Goodbye tank suits, hello Sam the Record Man and transistor radios.

So, years passed. I still know how to swim but I never took time to learn how to read music or play an instrument, even though LOML always had a guitar or two or three in our house. When the time came to make “the offer” to our children, they chose music and music it was.

Why I never bothered to take music lessons when I did have the opportunity, I’ll never know. And then, about a year ago, we saw a documentary movie called The Mighty Uke. It was amazing. They made “making music” seem possible for someone like me. Someone who saw sheet music as a language I’d never be able to decipher. LOML and I headed to Belleville and bought ukuleles. His is a tenor and mine is a soprano. We bought a music book for ukuleles and a Ukuleles for Dummies book. I learned to chord. I learned to strum—although my playing is a lot like Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam plunking on the exploding piano. The problem wasn’t obvious to me, at first. When I was “into” swimming, someone took me to the pool and waited while I did my warm-up, lengths and speed laps. I haven’t got anyone to tell me to practise. Learning to play is my complete challenge. It’s not preparation for a race. It isn’t about how smooth the flip turns are or how fast the last lap was. I am the only person I compete with and I enjoy myself. It all sounds good to me, although I may have a tin ear.

On Sunday past, we (LOML, COM and I) attended an “I Can Be Great” Workshop in Kingston. Ukulele wizard James Hill of The Mighty Uke movie was the workshop host, and spent two hours showing us how to have fun while learning to make a bit of music. The event was hosted by Kingston’s Open Voices Choir, Joe’s Musical Instrument Lending Library and sponsored by the City of Kingston Arts Council. Did I walk away with a recording contract? Nope. Can I play as well as I can swim? Nope. Am I having a good time? You bet your Evil Twin Chords, I am.

 theresa@wellingtontimes.ca