My Son’s Singing

On parent-child interactions, translated…

One thing I’m certain of, my eldest son surely loves to sing, but he’d never, sung in front of me.

That day, I’d stood outside the bathrooms, and worked hard, to hear the notes coming from him mixed in with the splashing of the water from the shower. The tunes he’d hummed were mostly from school, perhaps, from his music classes, or those popular tunes, like “As a Breeze Lifted up the Kites/The Prayers I Said for You, Moved Me Because the Kindness/Finally, You’d, Vanished from My Sight at the Far End of the People Rushing by/I’d Finally Realized/that it’s Most Painful/to Smile While Crying………”

At age seven, while he was flying his kite at the riverside park, he’d gotten annoyed and kicked himself for the kite getting broken off the strings and getting stuck high up in the trees, does he understand the philosophies of life is not about having? At age eight, he’d become the Queen in the anime, splashed up that water in the tub, stomping around, believed, that the bathrooms can freeze instantly into the castle of the Ice Queen. At ten, he’d still used the shower head as the mic, and, treated the small space of the bathroom’s echoing system as the surround sound systems of the radio, and alleviated his tiredness through the whole day.

from before when they were younger…photo from online…

Before bed, he’d come to play coy with us, seeing how I wasn’t moved, my eldest started humming “Lullaby” by Brahms. He’d changed the lyrics, “Go to sleep/good mommy/my mommy is asleep…”, I’d curled up like an infant, and enjoyed that childish voice that’s ringing in my ears.

A little bit later, my eldest started, “Mom, you’d sung this tune to me to get me to sleep, along with ‘those kids who can’t sleep, fall asleep quick, or she’ll chew off your pinky’”, and it’d, unlocked my memories, my youngest added, “Yeah, yeah, that’s right, there’s NO Belvedere! And there’s ‘Make a Plane/Make a Plane/Landing in the Pastures’ then you’d allowed us onto your lap, then, extended your legs, and we both flew up!”

So, they do, remember everything.

In my half asleep, half awake, I’d listened to those nursery rhymes, and recalled their recillustration from the papers online…ollections of nights they couldn’t sleep, and, with their words, it’s, as if I’m sitting inside the spinning cup ride, dizzying, looking at the memories, passing me by.

Seeing how I wasn’t responsive, my eldest shook me, asked, “Mom, did you hear?”, my youngest immediately hushed him, “Stop singing, mom’s asleep………”, if I were a baby, I would’ve definitely starting crying, “I want more songs, wah~~~”

So, this is what happened before bedtime, this intimacy that’s shared between the mother and her sons, and, the sons recalled the times their mother sang to them as they were babies, and, that was a cherished memory they all shared.