Gimme Sympathy

"And the lyrics go: "So whiskey won't you come and take my troubles, 'cause I can't seem to do it anymore.""

I stop singing and look expectantly at Jessie, who's holding the guitar. We're with the gang, on our annual Labor Day cabin weekend. There are people playing Hammerschlagen across the way, a few people have wandered off to bed, and a few of us are sitting around the the fire, singing.

Jess look at me, amused. "I haven't heard of it, but Kel, I want you to know that almost the entire time, you were singing the same note there." She pauses and smiles the sweetest smile I can imagine. "I don't know if it was the right note, but it was the same one."

We pause for a moment and then burst out laughing.

***

"Kel?"

"Hang on, I need to leave the room for a second." My satin party dress makes a slight whispering noise as I slip out.

"Hey, what's up?"

"We have your birthday present!" 

I start laughing. "From half a country away?" 

"Yeah, are you ready?" 

"Of course!"

After a few moments, someone notices that that I'm no longer at my own party. When they find me, I've kicked off my high heels and am sitting cross-legged on the bed, in my party dress, crying softly and listening while my friends sing me I'll Fly Away, a song I love, and a song they learned specifically for my birthday. 

The guy who's walked into the room gently rubs my back, hands me a tissue, and quietly leaves. 

***

"How much have you guys had to drink?"

Mom and I look at one another and burst out laughing. We're in the kitchen, listening to Motown, drinking wine, and singing along to my Motown playlist when my father walks in.

I love hearing my mother sing. 

My mother's childhood was full of Sunday dinners that ended in complex harmonies. Her mother possessed perfect pitch, a trait that missed both of us, but when Mom and I are together (especially if we're in the kitchen) we're usually singing. It's been this way for my whole life. When I think about my childhood, any memory is almost inevitably accompanied by the opening chords of Springsteen's Rosalita or Aretha Franklin hitting the high note on Share Your Love with Me.

I grew up in a house full of music, even if we weren't the ones making it. 

***

There's a nine second video on my phone that makes me so happy I could spit. 

I took it last week. I went to my running partner's house for a mid-week party. He was at the piano, taking requests, and I asked for my song of the moment, Metric's Gimme Sympathy.  It's one of those songs, like Skinny Love or Wagon Wheel that just, gets me, right in that spot behind your sternum where music hits you sometimes. It's a song I have to hear to the end, that I will belt out with abandon while I'm cooking or driving or in the shower, it makes me smile so hard my cheeks hurt when I hear it unexpectedly. 

The video is of my running partner, whose voice I love, singing a bit of the chorus. Right after I filmed it (specifically so that I could watch it when I was having a rotten day) he paused and said: "Kel, come here and help me out. I don't really remember the lyrics." 

I pulled a chair up to the piano and we sang it together. 

***

I love to sing. 

How could I not, after growing up in the house I did? Of course I turned out this way.

If I am alone, I'm singing to myself. I sing while I'm cooking, while I'm cleaning the house, while I'm walking to and from my bus stop, while I'm texting with friends, I sing at my desk while I'm working. 

I sing constantly. 

The problem, of course, is that I can't carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it. My sense of rhythm is so bad that I don't clap along at concerts because I am invariably half a beat behind. I sound awful and I know it. I've known it for most of my life and I've just adapted. I only sing when I'm alone. The second I see another person walking down the street toward me I clam up. When there are other people over helping me cook, I play instrumental jazz so I won't be tempted. I would rather set myself on fire than do karaoke. 

***

Some years ago, a couple friends of mine started learning songs for my birthday.

It's the birthday tradition I look forward to most every year. They kept it up even when they moved across country and it means the world to me. Most of my friends are musicians, either vocalists, music teachers, or simply gifted with the innate ability to pick up an instrument and follow along on a song, so I've started to ask more of them to learn something for my birthday.

The reason I love this, particularly, as a birthday gift is because the songs they learn are my favorites, and they learn them with the intention of singing together. The friends who started this tradition, the friends who I impose on every year are people who have known me for most of my adult life. They've either managed to get enough wine into me to convince me to sing along, caught me in the kitchen, or been the recipients of enough inadvertent pocket dials that they know how rotten I sound and that I'll usually be dragging the beat.

They don't care.

That's not quite right. They're talented musicians and they take a great deal of pleasure in sounding, you know, good. It's more that they love me and the know how happy it makes me to do something I love without a shred of self-consciousness. Or, as my running partner frequently tells me:

"I love singing with you. You've gotten to the point where you stopped giving a damn how you sound and it's refreshing."

I don't know that the friends who do this for me understand the enormity of the gift they give me every year. It's the sort of gift that requires a tremendous "thank you" but I've never been able to find the words to describe what it means to me.

Instead I just sent along my song requests for this year.

I can't wait.