NPR and Mother's Day

Here are my three daughters, Amy (33), Jen (31) and Julie (29) with my Mom on her 97th birthday last July. I think of the years that span their lives and at myself strung in the middle and marvel at how God made us a family. This week Amy, who works at National Public Radio, did a phone interview with me about my favorite song. She said they were thinking of doing something on-air with this and I was concerned about coming up with an answer that was NPRish enough. I didn't think "I Stuck My Head In A Little Skunk's Hole" (one of our family camp song favorites) would make the cut.

Honestly, my favorite song changes from week to week. I did tell Amy that one of my current favorites is "Our God" my Chris Tomlin, but I also told her that the "Hallelujah Chorus" has been a lifetime favorite, too. It was the recessional for our wedding and I'm especially fond of the YouTube flash mob versions. Breaking into a few bars of it has always been my reaction to jubilation over anything from finding a lost item to arriving at the last day of school.

A text copy of some of our banter ended up on the NPR website and you can see it (the second piece down) by clicking HERE

I was comforted as I read through the posts on the website of the other moms' favorite songs. Many of them were not far off from my favorites. When Amy was a baby we used to sing "Once In Love With Amy" to her, much like Robin's mother sang "When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin Along" to her as a baby. I remember rocking Amy at night and singing Helen Reddy's "You And Me Against The World", too.

There were so many musical stages we passed through as a family--Sesame Street songs to Kids Praise with Psalty the Singing Songbook to Amy Grant and Sandi Patty (sorry, Sandi if I misspelled your name--I never could remember which had the 'i' and which had the 'y'). Then there was the broadway musical stage, the Simon and Garfunkel stage, and then my kids kind of passed me by and left me in the dust on the way to the alternative rock and classic rock stage.

The songs that are part of our lives--rollicking renditions of Bill Gaither's "I Am A Promise" or even "Jesus Loves Me" are not all timeless classics but they frame moments of beauty and being. Some of those tuneless things we hum just to survive the day are totally our own creations never to be repeated.

Music and motherhood go together and I'm thanking God for both of them today.