Good Mourning Dove

As I told my aging baby sister on her last birthday, adult life is one wave of grief after another so it’s especially important to mark celebrations as grown-ups. Many of us celebrate birthdays, Christmas, and the like for children, but actually, grown-ups need the celebration most of all.

Kids already lead fairly joyous lives compared to adults, yet they still encounter loss and need models for processing grief. So I wrote a singalong about a mourning dove that speaks to loss.

I recorded the song with my phone backstage while performing a children’s concert at Oberlin a couple of days ago with my music educator friends Angela and Tina. There was too much noise on the file so I recorded over it at home to make the song clearly audible. The local elementary school students did a beautiful job singing and humming along! And they eagerly sang along on the bird chorus of Little Bird, having been taught the song by the Oberlin College & Conservatory students in advance. I even saw a kid or two mouthing my lyrics as I performed, which was a first.

With the holidays upon us, I wanted to put together a gift guide (for neurodivergent people) but didn’t get to it … For now, I’ll just recommend my Orange Hour journal. Feel free to use code “quarter” for 25% off.

I feel like I got so little done this year. But I still feel tired and am looking forward to taking a break next week. I will celebrate with family and pumpkin pie. I hope you will have a great Thanksgiving too!

🔊 Listening to audio clips of the mourning dove. I used to hear one regularly outside my place but since I’ve started listening for it, the bird is nowhere to be found.