He sings!

I've always been into music. Mom tells me the story of how, as an infant sitting in my highchair, a song would come on the radio and I'd start swaying to the beat. My first grade teacher complained that I was disruptive at my desk as a constant hummer. In fifth grade, I took up playing the clarinet and experienced some success with it. And as a teenager, I'd shut myself in my bedroom and get lost in the lyrics of sad and pathetic lovesongs. It's no wonder I always swooned over the idea of playing the guitar or someone who put just the right words to the notes.

Some things never change. I still get lost in lyrics and often find myself singing along with an annoying television commercial. I sway to the beat of background music while Emma refuses to eat in her highchair. There is cause for celebration, if you ask me, when a song that is particularly narrative of one's own life comes over the car's radio. I find every excuse possible to sing my ordinary, everyday sentences to the tune of the A-Team themesong. And although I've dropped the clarinet as an instrument, I do play a darn good Yankee Doodle Dandy on the piano.

So, isn't it odd that such a music-loving person would choose the mate that I have? Jim doesn't sing. He doesn't dance. For the most part, he ignores the stories in the lyrics and chooses a tune based strictly on whether or not it has a decent beat for exercising. He says he thought high school band was completely stupid and only chose to stay in it because I was there. He often changes the station just when a song gets to the good part. So ughhh, right?

This morning, though, as I was lugging along with me a fairly down-in-the-dumps mood, it suddenly occurred to me that Jim sings! He does it in an unconventional way, and one who doesn't listen is likely to overlook the tune or the meaningful lyric. He's on vacation this week, and even so, he got up early just to iron my clothes for me. He took the kids to school so that I wouldn't be late. He encouraged me to eat a good breakfast. He removed the coke from my hand and put orange juice in it instead. He makes me laugh when I surely wouldn't otherwise. He helps me out of these stale moments of life when I'm wasting time feeling sorry for myself and makes me stop to listen.

You can't miss it - he's singing his heart out, folks.