My Beautiful Child

While I was listening to some music on random play, the song that I wrote for my late niece, Kaleigh, who died from SIDS in 2007, came on. I decided to listen to it even though I usually don't because it makes me too sad. I was uncontrollably sobbing when I wrote it and I haven't been able to get through it since.

Regrettably, as it turns out, Drew was standing beside me, even though she was supposed to be in bed, but I let her listen to it anyway because she is interested in music in general, and how I make and write music in particular.

She asked me if I wrote it and I said yes. Then she was silent, and after a few moments, I was shocked to see her face get red and her bottom lip quivering slightly. I asked her if she was okay and she shrugged, meaning I don't know, or I don't wanna talk about it. Many things could have happened to cause this reaction. Drew has been overtired all day because she didn't get enough sleep, and cranky to boot. She reacted to the piece of music in such a way that I was almost overwhelmed with guilt that I had let it play. But I don't lie to my kid, when she asks questions, I answer them, as best I can.

Drew knows virtually nothing about Kaleigh, because I never mentioned it to her. She may have heard about her death in passing from either her mother, or perhaps one of my family, I don't know. In any case, the music is very sad and very moving as you might expect, and some part of her took that in and recognized it for what it was: a requiem.

I explained to her why I wrote the song, and how I felt when I wrote it, how I put all my emotion into the notes and music, and that's the way great music is made. I ended up telling her the life stories of Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms, and how they wrote music. She said she wanted to write a song too, and wanted it to be better. I told her it doesn't matter if what you do is better than anyone else, that's not why you write music. You write it to say something about yourself, your life, your emotions and what you feel -- and what really matters is the act of creating and how you feel about creating it, not how it stacks up to other peoples' work.

I had two startling revelations tonight: One is that the song I wrote for Kaleigh having had such an effect on her, an innocent child, that I was completely blown away (again) by how effective a requiem that piece turned out to be.

The other is that I have an infinitely empathetic child, who is swayed emotionally by music without really knowing the context, and can understand such concepts as I ended up having to explain to her this evening.

If she decides to follow the musical arts in any way, I can see by tonight's occurrence that she will prove to be a force to reckon with in the future.