I joined a volunteer choir.

When I left professional theater life ten years ago, I was more burned out that I knew at the time. For years, I could barely listen to singing, particularly classical vocal music or opera. I listened to lots of wallpapery instrumental music from YouTube—Baroque guitar, the guy who just noodles prettily on the piano for hours at a time, jazz—but even then, if it reminded me of something I had once performed, I’d start to have bad thoughts about that performance (even if it had allegedly been well received!). It felt like a bad divorce. Sometimes I just preferred to work in silence.

In 2023, while my mother was in the hospital, she and I were going over some details of how we should formally celebrate her life after she was gone. She had opinions. She had been a music teacher and choral director, so of course we were to round up her old students to sing a few of the old songs. “And you’ll sing,” she added. I said yes, thinking she was going to be coming home from the hospital. She didn’t. But I sang with that chorus the following summer, and I gave myself a tiny solo to make her happy, in case she was listening.

A year later, I was busy translating a text book on, of all things, choral conducting. There are lots of music examples in this book, and naturally I was familiar with many of them. And that’s when it sunk in that, while I didn’t miss being a singer or performing, I actually missed making the music. I wanted to sit in rehearsals and bathe my ears in choral music.

The bad news was that I could barely sing. Menopause and the ten-year hiatus had taken their toll. The good news was that there is a beautiful Baroque church just ten minutes from where I live, and this church maintains a choir that sings three or four services a year as well as a concert with orchestra, but not every Sunday. And anyone can join.

The first months required patience on my part, and probably on the part of anyone who sat next to me. I have good intonation, I’m quite musical, I can count, I’m a confident choral singer—but my voice didn’t want to cooperate. After those first months, though, things started slowly sliding back into place. I have to proceed very carefully and anything beyond an octave above middle C tends to sound ghastly, but I’m finding workarounds and tricks that help.

Today I was part of a small ensemble that sang pieces during the Good Friday service. I am sometimes jealous of my church choir colleagues—they may not be as musically solid as I am, but being musically solid means nothing if you can’t sing your part, and they have nice voices. So I’m grateful to be part of this world again. I may not be married to singing anymore, but singing and I are back on friendly terms, and that has made me happy.

And yes, I tend to think Mom had some hand in all this.