I attended
a very enjoyable dinner party yesterday evening; a friend invited about fifteen
of her good friends to share her birthday celebration with her. Get a group of
women together, and you know the evening won’t lack for enthusiastic and
interesting conversation, and it didn’t. But this evening ended up being a heck
of a lot of fun in a whole new way. The hostess sings in a choir, as do a
number of her friends. In other words, she loves to sing. So she invited us to
a sing-along, in this instance, to the film The
Sound of Music. In between eating dinner and dessert, we watched the film
from start to finish and sang the different songs as they showed up in the
film. We had been dealt out our respective roles, many of which overlapped with
others at the party. For example, I was dealt out the singing role for Rolf,
the nun, and Gretl, along with two other women at the party. I had never done
this before, so naturally I was a bit skeptical (as I always am) to anything
that might place me at the center of any unwanted attention. I also love to
sing, but reserve it mostly for when I am puttering around at home alone or in
the shower or in the typical places one might sing—mostly alone when no one is
listening. I have been told that I have a good singing voice, but I don’t sing
in a choir and am unlikely to do so at this point in my life. But I have to say
that this sing-along experience was an incredibly uplifting and fun group
activity, with no particular focus on any one person, and that made it all the
more enjoyable. At different points, I found myself listening to us as we hit
the high notes, and how our voices all soared in unison, and it was a rush. I
sometimes get that feeling when I am in church and the entire congregation
sings and the united voices lift you to a whole new place. It’s a wonderful
experience and one that will move you out of yourself if you let it.
I was very
young when I first saw The Sound of Music;
seeing it again was a moving experience, because Julie Andrews and Christopher
Plummer and the children were wonderful to watch. All of us watching the film
shared our memories of the time in our lives when we had first seen the film.
Some of the women had been taken to the theater by their parents, some by their
schools—but all of us had been touched by our original experience of the film.
And I have to say that it was like being at a teenage slumber party again
listening and watching grown women hoot, holler and comment when Maria and
Georg kissed for the first time, or when the Baroness tried her best to keep
Georg and Maria from being together. It made me realize that there is a common
bond among women that transcends cultures, if allowed to surface, which is what
this film was able to accomplish for us last night. There was a lot of laughing
as well as singing, and it was all a great deal of fun. I’d love to do it
again.
