My Musical Journey

I can’t remember a time I didn’t want to be a musician. My mom had a hand-me-down Magness organ with chord buttons on the left and traditional keyboard keys on the right. I used to try the play-by-number songbooks when I was 5 or 6, badly banging out tunes like Row, Row, Row Your Boat or Yankee Doodle Dandy. I felt such joy creating music of my own, just like Peter, Paul, and Mary did on my favorite record, Puff the Magic Dragon. If that song could transport and delight me, why wouldn’t I want to be part of that magic?

 

In school, music was one of my favorite subjects. An early music teacher strummed her autoharp and sang like an angel, unlike my five siblings, who belted out Christmas songs without regard for pitch or tone.

 

As the sixth-grade band approached, I thought I would finally get my chance to be a musician. But, as fate would have it, I needed braces more than I needed an instrument. So, my dream of playing got put on hold. Even though I probably could have picked up an instrument a few years later, teenage self-doubt kept me on the sidelines. I sang in the high school choir, which satisfied part of my musical pangs. But my heart’s desire was to play an instrument.

 

Although I had a couple of failed attempts at learning piano as an adult, I finally found my “voice” in the guitar. When my business coach asked what I would do if I had six months to live, I had no choice but to play music. I didn’t want that unfulfilled dream to haunt me in my last days.

 

In a twist of serendipity, a guitar teacher emailed me to ask if a student of hers could perform at an open mic night I co-hosted. So, when fate knocked on my door, I opened it and began taking lessons. As luck would have it, she also wrote songs. I had dabbled in writing a couple of children’s songs, and I was intrigued. Given that I never liked playing, cooking, drawing, Lego-building, or other people’s ideas, songwriting sang to me like the Carolina wren that wakes me every morning.

 

Now, at midlife, I am right where I always knew I was meant to be. With only a few years of lessons behind me and a couple of dozen songs to my name, I’m a relative beginner. It can be frustrating at times to want to play like James Taylor, only to play more like Elmer Fudd. Yet, I persist. I am here on this journey to learn and create, to fail and try again, and to keep searching for that perfect chord that makes my heart sing.