Joinsupermoms

I love music and have loved it as long as I can remember. I have never been good at expressing myself verbally. Writing or singing has always come out better.

Lyrics seem to draw the words out of your gut so all you need to do is feel. Then, the music expresses your feelings for you in a language so apt you can’t unspeak it.

So it was that I was sucked into a world of lyrics and song. I could listen and dance for hours on end. Everything else could wait. Best of all, I had a voice for the music.

If you have a child like I was, you are likely tearing your hair out trying to get this child to speak, communicate and perform the simple necessary tasks of life.

Things like cleaning my room, getting to school on time, having a shower on the weekend even brushing my teeth were all a chore because if I started learning a song, I had to get it right and it had to be in tune and my pitch had to be perfect. Well, my parents weren’t having it.

So, my prized possessions were my music CDs, which I saved every crumb for and guarded jealousy. Living in West Africa you had lots of pirated CDs but I always hunted and got the original albums, you know with the printed lyrics and a poster of the artist sometimes neatly folded in the shiny a plastic jewel case. There was just one guy who sold them at the Petit Marché in Niamey, at 10,000 CFA francs, which may have been a rip off, but it was worth it. It was always an achievement to buy one at the end of every month. That was my stock ticker life investment.

My dad hated the CDs. He must have thought they were driving me crazy. He said I was addicted; we’d have an awful fight each time I’d get lost in a new album. His mission was to “destroy” all of them, he’d say. I would shiver in horror. My mission was to protect them with my life.

We hardly talked without arguing, thought we had nothing in common, yet we had so much in common. I was indeed addicted to my music like he was addicted to the BBC World News. Yuck, I thought. Little did I know I would be a faithful subscriber to the service today.

At the time, however, I hated his world news with every fibre of my being, and I would block it out with the music in my ears, blasting it as loudly as I could manage. Sometimes I couldn’t hold myself back. I would retreat into my room to throw a “solo party”. That’s what I would call them. Parties with myself as the only guest, dancing and jumping to music blaring in my ears. I still have them down to this day.

I had a song for every mood. I loved instrumental jazz when I needed to journal or daydream. If I needed to get away to a place of romance, I loved soft rock, pop or RnB. Sometimes I was just reinforcing mini life lessons I thought I had learned. I would play some alternative, opera or classical music to drill those in.

Many times, my emotions would be everywhere and nowhere. I would just feel I needed to balance myself out. At those times, Lionel Richie was the go-to. I liked to sing and dance to “All Night Long” and “Stuck on You”. So, Lionel Richie became a sort of balancer for me. I could be lucid and happy after singing along. I could contribute constructively and follow in discussions. Those must have been the few lucid moments my parents would recognize their kid was back.

Perhaps if they understood what music meant for me, what role it played for me. Perhaps if they made the links between the lyrics and my unspoken words…perhaps if we spent time listening to music together, we could actually sing instead of bickering at each other, and I would have spoken my mind, they would know all my secrets.

Sometimes the kid within is actually all there, but you have to learn their language. Mine was music.

In the end, my dad won. I reckon he wouldn’t have had the courage to do it alone. So, my elder sister came home one day and gathered my pile of treasured CDs – My stock portfolio. My life investment – and liquidated it. They threw them all out. The good, the bad and my latest addition to my Lionel Richie collection, Louder Than Words, and I am gutted till this day.

Here’s how I rose from that trauma: My brain swung into action. It is in fact true that when you lose one of your senses, the others become super-efficient. There’s not a favourite song I can’t remember and not a healing lyric that isn’t engraved in my heart.

There’s not a playful moment I share with my kids where I don’t sing them a random blast from the past. The cherry on the cake? They don’t just sing along. Sometimes their entire playlist is a replica of my old favourites. My love and joy with them is indeed Louder than Words.