What if everyone can sing?

I am nine years old. I am new in the village, and have no close friends. Our teacher is old fashioned. She loves to let the girls stand up close to her organ, on a podium, and sing, while the boys sit down, in the end of the class room and draw.

I stand somewhere in the middle of the girls. I like to sing. Every morning since early childhood, I’ve been singing in the bathroom while combing my hair. I made up the songs as I stood there, singing about the day to come, and things like that. I looked myself in the mirror, while I let the words pour out of my mouth. And I loved doing that. It was like my preparation for the day. Maybe a bit like thinking out loud.

So I liked to sing. I was aware I wouldn’t win a singing competition. But still I liked it.

I stand there and sing together with the girls. I don’t really know why the boys wasn’t allowed to sing. Maybe our teacher thought that they would do some mischief instead of singing?

And while we are in the middle of singing one of the girls, who is the daughter of the music teacher, she made us all stop singing, saying out loud:

– Teacher, I don’t want to stand close to Charlotte, since she is singing out of tune.

Our teacher stops to play the organ. She looks at my classmate and then at me. Then she said:

– Charlotte, you can sit by the boys and draw.

And I had to do this little walk of shame. Leave the girls, leave the podium, picking up my crayons, and sit down among the boys, whispering to the nearest one:

– I hate to sing, I prefer to draw.

A lie, alas. A way for me to save the situation. I didn’t show what was moving inside. I think this might have been the birth of my ice-princess, a persona I could use, not to show my feelings and emotions (because i ”knew” that crying would have made things even worse.

Anyways.

That was the last time I sang for ten years.

Sometimes this memory still hurts. And I sometimes wonder if my teacher knew what she did to me? (I wasn’t allowed to sing as long as she was my teacher.)

Today I sing. I sing out of tune. I sing when I feel like it. It’s not to often. And still it happens that fear is awakened in me when I sing together with others, and I am afraid that I ruin the moment for them, since I am a bad singer.

The other day I told this story when my daughter was present. And she said: ”Mum, you still cannot sing.” And gosh, it hurt for a while. And I said something like: ”Well, I still sing, and I love to with your small children, since they accept my voice.” And even though I didn’t collapse. It hurt. And my daughter soon became aware and she said: ”Sorry, mum, I didn’t say that to hurt you, I didn’t mean to be so harsh, it was more like I compared you to my friends who sings in choirs”.

Interesting. Telling the story from my childhood doesn’t hurt, doesn’t make me feel ashamed. But, telling what happened the other day, makes me feel shaky. So there is still at least a little wound in me, when it comes to singing.

So: What if, everyone can sing?
What happened in you while reading this?