Lullaby for My Grandmother

I promised to sing my grandmother to sleep 3.00 PM California time. Long live the time difference between here and home, so I don’t have to stay up to sing people their lullaby. As I travel on BART from Oakland I realize I’ll never make it home to Daly City in time for the lullaby. My only option is to get off in SF and find a place where I can sing my lullaby there. So I get off at 24th Street. I walk to a small park that’s nearby. I feel a little weird, who sits in a random park singing a lullaby with music coming out of a music box. But on the other hand, it’s SF, stranger things happen on the streets here.

There is a soccerfield next to the park where a bunch of teenagers or playing a game. I try to move as far away from the field as I can and find a quiet place with not that many people around. Which is again pretty close to playground. If the kids keep playing as silently as they are now, I’ll be fine. I prepare my music box.

When I Skype my grandmother she’s already in bed. She says she misses me. And I realise that hearing her voice makes me miss her too. I start singing, but halfway in the song kids that were playing far away on the playground discover the swings very close to me. So the kids play laughing and screaming loudly. Then a cleaning truck comes by, making crazy noise. Not the perfect background for a lullaby, but what can I do… It’s not like I can stand up in the middle of the park and scream: ‘Hey do you all mind keeping it quiet for just a minute?! I’m trying to sing my grandma to sleep on the other side of the world!’ So thankful for my yoga and meditation practice I focus on the words and how my voice carries them to her all across the ocean. And I realize it’s her voice I’m singing with. There are not many people in my family as musical as she. She was one of the first women to make her money with singing backing vocals on television and the radio. If there’s anyone who gave me my singing voice genetically, it’s her. So with her voice and musicality being passed for two generations, I sing her a lullaby.