The imp of improvisation

Grampa's little muse

Last night my son-in-law banged out chords on the piano and improvised a silly song about baby Elizabeth, and soon we were all adding verses about the things she does so well: She sleeps! She smiles! She swims through the air! She can simultaneously sneeze and burp! (Snurp? Beeze?)

This, among other reasons, is why we need babies: they inspire improvisation. I sang to my children all the time when they were babies and don't seem to have suffered from my tone-deaf renditions. Just take a familiar tune and alter the words to reflect whatever we're doing right this minute--which explains the number of songs dealing with excretion. (Yesterday I frequently heard a song proclaiming, "She poops and she pees and she dances with the trees"--a masterpiece in the making!)

When my daughter was a toddler, she used to love to sit on the piano bench next to Daddy and pound on the keys while singing at the top of her lungs, generally the same words and notes over and over with no relation to what Daddy was playing at the time. And yet it was music to my ears, and the memory remains music to my inner ear.

Now here we go round the mulberry bush once again, holding a tiny but feisty person who wields a remarkable power to draw music from thin air. You could call her the Imp of Improvisation--but if she sneezes and burps at the same time, you'd better get out of her way.