Uneclipsed by Melinda Hardin

Author:Melinda Hardin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melinda Hardin
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

SILENT SONGBIRD

I’d been up since before my alarm rang, roused by the vocal scales my daddy was singing in the hall bathroom just down from my bedroom. This was a regular occurrence, and though I preferred to be sleeping, it was a sweet wake-up call.

Our taste in music finds little intersection, but I could listen to my daddy’s tenor voice all day. And because music emits from his pores, I often do. There’s a black-and-white picture of him hanging in the hall at the bottom of our steps. He is singing lead but sharing the microphone with the rest of his quartet. He’s got a smile behind his eyes, and his signature pointed index finger in the air. You see, he’s as much of a storyteller as he is a singer, and the rise of his finger lets you know that you need to listen to what’s coming next.

My mother’s picture hangs next to his, a rendering of her on stage portraying the main role of Julie in the University of Kentucky’s musical Carousel. I often stop to admire this image of her. She then stands next to me to remind me that she had to drop down one of the choruses to an octave lower during the performance, thanks to her former affinity for Winston cigarettes. She has a hard time just basking in my awe of her.

On rare occasions, I got to hear my parents sing together, usually at church for “special music.” Each time they approached the stage, my Grandmom glanced at me, squeezed my hand, and reminded me, “I just love to hear your mother and daddy sing.” Though Mama’s voice is more trained and formal than Daddy’s, the melodies they make marry beautifully.

Grandmom Mathis got to hear her fair share of my brother Lewis’s music, too. Her basement was the setting of his regular band practice. This meant that in her eighties, she turned down her Bing Crosby cassette to hear Lewis and his band crank out the likes of Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. My brother embodies music. From the time my parents gave him a guitar for his fifth birthday, it’s been as much a part of him as his actual limbs. Watching him play is like watching him teleport to another realm, and you are invited. I’m mesmerized by both him and it.

Inches away from where my mom and dad’s pictures are on display, there is a pictorial homage for my brother. One framed newspaper article headlines him as Shelbyville‘s “Music Man.” I believe my first memory of Lewis is of him playing guitar . . . or maybe it is just such a part of him that I can’t separate the two, the man from the music.

How did they all get so brave?

What happened to my dose of courage?

“Do you sing?” It’s a question I am often asked by any number of people after someone hears one of my family members perform.

The truth is, I lost my confidence singing when

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