The Sound of Music

As I start this post I have a song from “The Sound of Music” bouncing around in my head.  I’ve heard it enough over the course of the past several weeks that this is not surprising to me.  Climb every mountain… <something> every stream… follow every rainbow… ‘til you find your dream?  Gee, I felt like I knew the words… I should know the words, but clearly I don’t.

Cal does, though.  And to Maria, and Doe, a Deer, and Raindrops on Roses and even to the yodel-lay-hee, yodel-lay-hee yodel-lay-hee-hoo song (whatever the official name of it is).

When we actually started listening to the soundtrack EVERY DAY, I don’t recall.  A month ago, maybe more?  Dan just started playing it just before and during dinner.  Eventually he’d play it late morning or just after naps on the weekends as a, we believe, healthy alternative to TV and something more than just the general noises of the house.  Anytime some non-TV entertainment was warranted, Dan was (and still is) pushing <play>  on the iPod, and “The Sound of Music” was coming on.

It’s actually pretty fun to watch Cal react to the music.  I remember early in our listening to the soundtrack, Cal was chasing Ella around the first floor of our house; when Doe, a Deer came on, he stopped dead in his tracks and just listened, expressionless.  For anyone growing up on Eureka St. in my home town of Lemont in the 70s and 80s, it was like he was playing “Statue Maker” and someone had yelled, “freeze!”  When he noticed I was staring at him, he grinned but continued listening, holding his position.  There was something about the song that drew him in.  (Ella, on the other hand, was still running around as if Cal was still chasing her.)

While I can sing How do you solve a problem like Maria? (the chorus, tune and all), Cal can sing that as well as most of the words leading up to that chorus.  I think there might be a “flippity flip” in there somewhere; but other than that, all I can come up with is the tune.  Not Cal – he’s got the lyrics AND the tune down.

Cal knows he knows the words pretty well, too.  He has disagreements with Dan on what the exact words in a particular section of a song are.  One of the disagreements was about Doe, a Deer – Cal insisted it was “Far… a long, long way to run,” Dan had it correctly at “Fa… a long, long way to run.”  Another was later in the same song – “When you know the notes to sing, you <?> sing most anything.”  Dan said it was “may,” Cal correctly said it was “can.”  They disagreed about it, gave it a listen and, with much anticipation for and attention to that line of the song, Dan admitted defeat – Cal was right.  Not that anyone’s looking to keep score, but I believe they’ve each been right (and, incidentally, wrong) once each.

Cal’s Grandma and Papa Leatherman paid us a visit a couple of weekends ago.  With this came some new “blood” with whom to share our appreciation for “The Sound of Music” music (Cal used to say “muse-gick” when he was 2… but I digress).  Soon after their arrival it became the Cal-and-Grandma-Sing-The-Sound-of-Music show – what a fantastic scene this was!  Grandma knows all of the words, too; so they sang together.

That was on Saturday evening.  On Sunday morning we threw the DVD in to actually watch the movie.  Nearly three more hours of “The Sound of Music.”  Well, three hours for Grandma and me; Cal made it to the intermission and then occasionally peeked in on the movie throughout the second half.  I’m not sure what happened to Dan.  And Ella?  I think she was distracted by her Mickey board books, Zoe attacking her and wanting some “mulk.”

When we picked the kids up from school on Friday, Cal’s teacher asked me, “Do you guys listen to “The Sound of Music” a lot at home?”  She has no idea.  Apparently, Cal has his classmates singing songs from the musical during clean-up and other class activity times.

As with anything else our kids latch onto, this could just be a phase that Cal will either tire of or simply replace with something else.  There’s something about this music thing, though, that has us wondering if it’s not a phase.  Early on, he was hooked on Fergie (until he was 3-1/2, he’d fall asleep to her album; at 2-1/2, he could sing most of “Glamorous”).  During the Fergie phase, he also learned the Notre Dame Fight Song, which he still sings today.  Also during the Fergie phase, he latched on to what he called “Bad Fergie,” a song from this relaxing “Dreamland Baby” album sung by someone named Eric Manana.  Now he’s moved on to “The Sound of Music.”  Dan and I talk about getting him enrolled in a music class or lessons of some sort, and I think this is the right time to do so.  Strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.  He sure seems interested.  And he listens to – and hears – both the music and the lyrics, something that I still find challenging myself today.  How do you solve a problem like Maria?  How do you catch a something… something… la… la… la…