Ana's Soundtrack

So, the thing is... I've been thinking about music.

(“Who are you, ELMO?” you're thinking. Because that's how Elmo starts every show. He's been thinking about something. It's sort of contagious!)

I've been thinking about music because I had the loveliest moment with my girls recently. I feel the need to catalog these lovely moments because my oldest daughter, Ana, who is three-and-a-half, is in a particularly contrary phase and the only way I am staying remotely sane is to remember that occasionally, there are some really nice moments.

I was rocking Smiley Jane down for her nap when Ana suddenly commanded “Sing ‘Baby Mine.’” Baby Mine is one of the songs I use as lullabies. So I sang “Baby Mine” and then next thing I knew, Ana had pulled a chair up and was sitting next to Jane and me. So I sang “Pride and Joy” (the Marvin Gaye version) and then I sang “Circle Game” (Joni Mitchell). My whole lullaby repertoire. I don't have the greatest voice in the world but I can carry a tune and Ana sat transfixed. I don't know why it was such a nice moment. Maybe just because we all sat still for a few minutes. Or maybe because music is a big part of our lives as a family and there we were, sharing it.

My husband and I are what I would call Music People. You know how some people are Movie People, and some people are Television People, and some are Food People? I think we're Music People, maybe with a minor in Food. When Ana was born, we didn't know anything about how we were going to care for her but we did know what her first CD would be. We took a jam box and a copy of “Abbey Road” with us to the hospital.

Anyway, we've always had a lot of music around our house. My favorite CD for children is called “My Best Friend is a Salamander” by Peter Himmelman, but as you might imagine, we have the full spectrum of Sesame Street, as well as “Pat the Bunny” and “Toddler Favorites.” We made tapes of all the Sesame Street CDs so I can play them in the car. I've listened to Elmo’s Sing-Along Travel Songs for the last two years, almost non-stop. (A little therapy to stop the twitching and I'll be as good as new.)

Both of our girls are really responsive to music. If you just barely start to sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” to Jane, she starts to dance. When Ana was tiny, my husband would play guitar to her while she sat in her bouncy seat and she would pump her arms and legs, she was so excited. She's taking a music class now with a wonderful teacher who brings in many instruments and lets the kids experiment with making music. “Mom, I played the autoharp!” I had totally forgotten autoharps even EXISTED. But then it all came back to me. Remember playing “Greensleeves” on the autoharp in grade school?

We've often used music as a distraction. My husband is great at impromptu silly songs. He makes them up as much to make me laugh as to entertain the kids. (I remember one time when Ana was tiny and very enamored of this plastic yellow duck (her constant companion) when my spouse made up a song called “Yellow Duck” to the tune of “Purple Rain” and I laughed so hard I almost did a little piddle.) Some of his songs have become traditions in our house. He has a song about changing diapers that my entire extended family can sing. I found myself humming the Diaper Song one day when I realized that it was to the tune of the “Look for the Union Label” commercial on television. (“When you change the baby's diaper, you best not forget to wipe her. ‘Cause her mother is a tiger, and she likes her kitten clean...”)

I WILL say that my husband has been a bit miffed at children's songs ever since he discovered that “The ABC Song”, “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” all have the same melody. So he's taken a rather perverse pleasure in introducing Ana to some classic rock-n-roll. For a while when Ana was first walking, her favorite song was the Who's “Baba O’Riley” --you know, the “teenage wasteland” song? She liked the drums.

But recently, he went too far. I'm as big a Beatles fan as the next person --in fact, I'll wager that I am a BIGGER fan than most simply by association, having married a man who has every recording ever made by them as a group or alone, both in the original and re-mastered editions --but enough is enough. I draw the line at the White Album as Toddler Soundtrack.

When Ana's daddy introduced her to the White Album, I wasn't prepared for her instant adoration of it. And because I am a casual appreciator of the Beatles as opposed to a fanatic, I hadn't studied the lyrics enough to object. By the time I clued in, we were heavy into a Phase.

The White Album is not the “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” nice, pre-LSD Beatles. It's a fractious, obnoxious, loud (and okay, brilliant in an adult way) album. And I could just smack my spouse for introducing it to Ana. One day, on our way to preschool, we started the trip with “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and ended it with “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?” (Ana: “Do WHAT in the road, Mom?” Mom: “Driving. Why don't we drive in the road? Drive. That’s what people do. In the road. They drive.”) We've made other revisions, too. Instead of “Hey, Bungalow Bill, what did you kill?” We sing “Hey, Bungalow Bill, what did you DO?” But please, don't even get me started about “Wild Honey Pie”-- ELMO is less obnoxious!

I feel badly about it but have you ever tried to explain sarcasm to a three-year-old? I hate that I have suddenly crossed into the Parental Lying Zone --I, who promised to tell my girls the truth always, even when the questions made me uncomfortable. The thing is, I am prepared to answer all questions about sex but I can't bring myself to explain Yoko Ono.

Are three-year-olds sent to give us a taste of what we can expect in the teenage years? I don't think the lyrical content of the White Album is suitable for a three-year-old but I seem to be powerless to persuade her of that now that she's been exposed to it. And she's just in such an oppositional phase, I wonder if this is a worthy battle to choose. In a few weeks, she'll have moved on to something else. God help me if it's the Rolling Stones.

Parenting is so WEIRD. In the battle for the hearts and minds of our children, who knew that I would be rooting for Elmo against the lads from Liverpool?

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Barbara Cooper is the mother of Ana (3.5) and Jane (1). She lives in Austin, Texas and right now she's listening to the nice sound of silence.