Casa Jonsson

Fair warning: this entry will read like an obnoxious Christmas letter that describes how all the children are above average.

Last weekend our kindergartener told me he wanted to write a song. He had already come up with a title. So I helped him explore the theme of the title and coaxed lines out of him that elaborated on it. All the words and sentences were his; I just snagged them from the air and set them down in coherent verses while he thought out loud. Afterward he made up a melody for the first verse. Actually, he got a little stuck after the first line, so I helped. The tune for the coda is all me, but it’s inspired by what he created for the rest of the song. Take a look at the lead sheet in the real key and capo 5 (Acrobat Reader required).

Tomorrow night our preschooler will see his first opera. A family friend happens to be a member of HGO Guild and got us two tickets to a dress rehearsal of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Our son has an intense interest in music—one might even call it an obsession. Our HGO Guild friend once asked our son what instrument he wanted to play when he grows up, and his response was, “I want to be the man up front with the stick!” She told HGO guest conductor Emmanuel Joel about this, and about his musical gifts, and Joel expressed an interest in meeting him. (Apparently, Joel decided at the age of six that he wanted to be a conductor.) So Araceli will take our little guy on a date and maybe videotape the exchange with the French opera conductor.

That one of the big boys gets to stay up late and see sword fights creates a bit of a problem, as you might expect. I’ll make it up to our kindergartener by taking him to the actual performance later this month.