Allegra Finds Her Song

           Growing up in a musical family was very difficult, but if you yourself weren’t musical at all, it was sheer torture.  In Allegra’s family it was particularly hard, because it wasn’t that her family could play music. Not at all. Her family members were music. It lived in their voices. From the meekest whisper to the boldest shout and the most raucous shriek – every vocal tone had melody and rhythm as intricate as any concerto every played.

           From birth, Allegra had been painfully aware that she lacked the musical nature of her family. Her twin sister’s cries had been a thrilling aria building to a crescendo of the denouement of a grand opera. Allegra’s cries held the blatting wail of an out of tune car horn. 

           As they grew up, Cadence’s voice became the charming peep of a piccolo. Allegra’s voice was the flat rasp of metal in a grinder. 

           Their parents of course embodied the musical nature of their family – Mother was a beautiful glissando that slid like silk over you when she spoke. Allegra felt shivers when she heard Mother talking. And Father had the elegant poise of a timeless elegy – always methodical and on point, just like a metronome.

           It was worse when her extended family gathered together. Everyone there held music in their voices – from her grandmother’s trilling flute to her aunt’s brassy trumpet. Grandpa’s voice was basso profundo incarnate. Everyone was musical except for poor Allegra.

           “Allegra find her song yet?” everyone would ask when the family got together. Then she’d get a smile and platitudes, assurances that she would find her song, or it would find her, and when she least expected it.

           She had hoped that puberty would bring her the gift of song. She had heard of a distant cousin, Cavatina, who had gone through childhood with a voice like the honk of a goose wielding a chainsaw, only to come through puberty with a lovely lilt of a pan flute as her reward.

           Puberty only brought her fuller hips, pimples and a voice that was now like a deeper, flatter cracking of ice at spring thaw. By contrast, Cadence’s voice was now a full-fledged swell of an orchestral movement every time she spoke. She had more than her share of suitors and was well-married by the time she was twenty and the mother of triplets by the time she was twenty-two. When the three of them cried, it was in a flurry of sixteenth notes almost too fast to make sense, but together it created the sweetest flavour of music – you could almost taste it as well as hear it. To close your eyes was to see the little cries blooming into ruffles of colour, pops that swirled and cascaded together to create new canvases never seen before. 

           Allegra left her childhood home after the triplets were born. She was seeking a world where nobody was musical in and of themselves. It was all right with Allegra if the people she met once she left home were able to use instruments to play music – Allegra actually quite liked music. She loved listening to the kind of music that was played on instruments by talented musicians. 

She didn’t like the music of her family – the voices that were in and of themselves music. It was too painful for her to know she would never be like that. She would forever be Allegra who had no music.

           But out in the world away from her family, she found she quickly became Allegra who was funny, Allegra who was kind to all she met, Allegra who had a good job as a librarian… and soon she was Allegra who was dating Jake.

           Jake was a patron of the library. They met when he came to use their sound booth to listen to old recordings of jazz musicians. He loved jazz and he loved swing dancing.  He convinced Allegra to learn a routine for swing dancing and said they could dance it at their wedding.

           And that was how Allegra found out she was going to marry Jake.  He had a ring and a plan and Allegra liked both of them.

           She hadn’t wanted to invite her family, but Jake gently insisted. He wanted to meet them, and he promised her that after their wedding she wouldn’t have to invite them to anything else, but he was sure she would always regret not inviting them to witness the happiest day of her life.

The day of the wedding she was very nervous. She didn’t spend any time with her family until after the reception – until after Jake had said his “I do” and kissed her in front of everyone to seal the deal. Only after that was she ready for him to meet the vast congregation of her family that had come to see her get married.

At the reception hall, she introduced Jake to her whole family and sat by as they all filled his ears with stories of ‘poor not musical Allegra’, their voices soaring and creating arpeggios and arias and crescendos that washed tides of misery over Allegra.

           They held forth for quite a while on the topic of Allegra and her lack of musical ability, to the point that she was very uncomfortable and regretting inviting them to the wedding. Then Jake said it was time for his and Allegra’s first dance and he would greatly like it if her family could come watch. Allegra could tell by the skeptical glances from her family that they weren’t expecting much from her.

           Allegra and Jake had practiced their dance in secret for months. She’d even begun dreaming the music at night when she slept. So, the dance inhabited her body, lifted her soul and allowed her to express herself as she never had before. Her muscles and sinews and bones were the verses and her spirit the chorus as she revealed her love for Jake and her commitment to her life with him with every movement she made. Every lift, every dip, every twirl held a meaning, a message for just the two of them. Music thrummed through her veins and her long hair tumbled in lyrical waves as she danced with her husband.

           Her family was silent when the dance was over, but the rest of their wedding guests were enthralled by the show she and Jake had put on.  She smiled as praise was showered on the two of them. This must be what it was like to have music in you the way her family did.

Next, all the wedding guests were invited to join the happy couple on the dance floor to share in the celebrations. It was then she realized that although her vast orchestra of a family had music in their voices, it didn’t live in their bodies as it did for her. There were many missteps, gasps and grimaces of pain and a lot of sore feet and twisted ankles before the song finished.

As she watched them fumbling and bumbling across the floor while she was gavotting easily with her husband, Allegra realized that we all have our own songs – just that not all of us sing with our mouths.