Making Music

When we had gone back for seconds, and our plates were emptied again, and conversation was easy, and the children were getting restless, we pulled out our instruments, right where we were on the covered patio, with the lavishly blooming lilacs for walls. There was a general twanging and humming as strings were stretched to the perfect pitch. Snatches of song from fiddle, mandolin, and banjo vied for preeminence as the children's voices had done a moment before, until the mother announced a title and strummed the first chords on her guitar, drawing the others into her song.

The only sister among a passel of boys sat beside me, both of us playing the mandolin, she with skill and grace, me a beginner, my fingers still learning the frets and chords. "G," she would say, looking and me and smiling, letting me know the key of the song. I watched her easy fingers with delight, and did what I could with my surprised and recalcitrant digits.

I'll Fly Away, Amazing Grace, When the Roll is Called up Yonder, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, Turn Your Radio On, Come Thou Fount -- we rolled from one song to the next, the interludes often filled with "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" from the mandolin while the banjo was still hammering away at "I'll Fly Away" and the fiddle was racing off with a bluegrass tune. At last we would decide on something, and the singers would find it in their hymnals, and once more the disparate notes would slide into unity.

After we sang a few verses, often the fiddle would take a turn, flying over the melody with a touch of whimsy, a wash of grace. Sometimes the banjo would come in for a solo, leading in with a flourish and shining at every opportunity to ornament. The mandolin beside me only broke loose under cover of one of her brothers, when she thought she could blend in.

The two little boys, not yet ready to join the jam sessions, wandered in and out among the instruments and singers, one quiet and unobtrusive, the other walking where he pleased with a swagger and making up for it by bestowing his sparkling smile liberally on all.

We sang "In the Garden" for the children's grandma, and put our instruments back in their cases as the colors of the sunset faded over the lake. The gift of the music lingered with us, but for the children, the evening was not complete without a rousing game of "monkey in the middle," played with a foursquare ball and much laughter in a narrow courtyard. "Julie, do you want to play?" asked my fellow mandolin player. How could I refuse?