“Marching band? You’ve gotta be kidding. That’s for dorks,” I scoffed when I was a smug high-school coed. A few years later, I soothed my shivering toddler as we watched band after band march past us during a subzero Christmas parade. “Soon,” I promised Karen. “Santa will come by very soon, sweetie.” Every New Year’s Day, the televised Rose Bowl parade seemed less a pageant for flowered floats and horse brigades and more an endless showcase for marching musicians. “Aack! Another marching band?” I complained. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
Then one day my music-loving daughter tucked her trumpet under her arm and joined her high-school band. I pasted on a parental smile and trilled an unfamiliar tune. “You joined the marching band? That’s great!”
For four years, from August through October, Karen toted her trumpet to daily band practices. She joined a hundred classmates and paraded around our neighborhood as one leg of a melodic centipede. A happy, hand-clapping entourage of moms and dads, younger siblings and dish-towel-waving neighbors sometimes followed along for blocks at a time. They created a small-town, ain’t-life-grand enthusiasm, as if a tiny piece of Mayberry had sprouted in our sprawling suburban neighborhood.
At home, Karen walked with the rolling heel-sole-toe marching step, gliding from room to room as if her legs had wheels. She and her friends seemed unconcerned that nonband classmates considered them a bit out of the ordinary. “Marching band?” I could almost hear them scoff. “That’s for geeks!” Yet I began to understand that this unordinariness was part of the attraction. I could see that it intrigued these talented teens to participate in an unconventional activity- costumed players in a high-school road show.
The after-school, after-dinner and Saturday practices were not just for parades but for fierce interschool competitions called “field show” performances. Karen’s band director issued Bible-thick drill books that mapped paths memorized by each band member. While interweaving trapezoids, triangles and spirals, and maintaining knife-straight lines, perfect arcs and diagonals, the band performed works by Bernstein and Copland. Culture lurked between the tuba oompahs and piccolo pipings. How delightful, one day, to discover my rock-and-roll daughter humming Gershwin as she glided from kitchen to den.
Karen’s marching debut was in a community parade close to our house. The band marched down the boulevard wearing gold plumed hats and black-and-white uniforms with gold epaulets. Held aloft, their school flags flapped in the breeze and fanned music into the autumn air. I joined other grinning, snapshot-happy parents as we trailed behind our children.
“Don’t you just love it?” I panted to bystanders as I sprinted to catch up to the trumpet section. “That’s my daughter!” I pointed her out to strangers sitting in aluminum chairs along the parade route. “Hey! Over here!” I shouted to a local TV crew videotaping the parade. “You can show another band, can’t you?” My conversion from closet disdain to button-popping pride was complete.
Every year at the band picnic, the director cajoled parents to take part in the field show to learn how hard our kids worked. Midfield, I stood with my daughter’s trumpet clasped in my sweaty hands. Karen bent my elbows, cocked my wrists, positioned my feet, tilted my chin and straightened my shoulders, like Geppetto arranging Pinocchio. Twice, daughters and sons walked us through a few of the complicated steps. Then they retreated to the sidelines to whistle and laugh as perplexed parents stumbled around the field.
We didn’t actually play the instruments (unless squawks of frustration sounded musical) and “performed” a tiny portion of the 60-plus moves in the show. When we finished our pathetic presentation my arms and shoulders sagged with fatigue, as if sawdust filled my sleeves.
I returned Karen’s instrument of torture to her. She cradled the gleaming trumpet and took my place on the field. Other parents eagerly returned tubas and trombones, trumpets and saxophones, clarinets and flutes, bass and quad drums. We retreated to the cool familiarity of the metal bleachers to watch our kids perform.
At the start of each marching season, bewildered ninth graders tailed the experienced upperclassmen with bulldog determination. I remembered hearing moans of frustration as everyone struggled to put music and motion together. This day, after months of practice, the band wheeled around the field with fluid precision. I watched Karen move smoothly from place to place, her trumpet held at a precise angle, her concentration unwavering. The music soared and surrounded us and I thought, “What a grand way to spend an afternoon!” When the piece was finished, we stood and clapped until our hands were stinging.
As a high-school senior, Karen viewed everything as being done for the last time -the last practice, parade, competition. But I know it won’t be the last time she will reach out to help a frustrated classmate. Friendships forged with sweat and sore muscles will last a lifetime. It won’t be the last time she will have the confidence to try something difficult and discover she does it well. Her marching-band experience will weave its way through her life like an invisible chord, a remembered tune when confidence flags.
And when this year’s marching band begins its practice parades down my street, I’ll join the happy, hand-clapping crowd that trails along behind. I’ll be the one waving a
