Topic: music
I guess the mother bird with new babies, in the little house on my porch, wasn't feeling much like singing one afternoon last week. Suddenly she found a reason!
It came as a surprise to me and to the teenage boy on my piano bench, a student of mine who plays reasonably well now. So that I really look forward to what he's going to do each week instead of wonder, as with beginning students who come unprepared to lessons, if I can endure the torture!
The piece took him into the upper registry of the keyboard (where sounds of birds or music boxes can easily be achieved by a skilled pianist). He was delighting me, when I suddenly realized that I wasn't the only one who was jubilant!
Yes, the mother bird seemed to have gathered friends to see her babies. I glanced out. Then immediately called attention to Brian, who had finished his first playing of the assigned piece. We smiled as the mother seemed to be teaching her babies to sing! Just for a minute or less before their song stopped as quickly as it had started.
Brian began playing again. Only when he reached the second movement of the piece--up in the higher registry--that the outdoor chirping began and increased in volume until it matched the intensity of music that the fingers on the piano were managing to achieve!
We had so much fun, repeating the exercise of waiting and stimulating the song several times before deciding to invest our time on another part of the lesson.
Forever, I hope I'll remember the little birds. They didn't seem to care what the source of the music was. They recognized it as being something they wanted to join, and found a way to fit right in--inspiring me to remember that sometimes I'd do better to imitate the birds.
