Written by If there is one thing in this house that there will never be a shortage of, it’s music.
Steven and I both started playing percussion in 3rd grade–playing everything from tympani and mallet instruments to snare drums and drum sets. We traveled miles in marching bands and logged hours in practice rooms. During our college days, I had a short stint with a band called the Dirty Green Apples my senior year, while Steve played in just about every band that performed on campus between the years of 1995 and 2007.
Even outside of our drumming, music is part of us. Our lives are punctuated with songs, like soundtracks. We debate our favorite bands. We broaden each other’s horizons with our wide range of musical tastes. We crank up the music in the car and sing along, loudly. Without music, we wouldn’t quite know how to define ourselves.
So, it should not have come as any surprise that we christened our daughter with a musical name.
Cadence: a rhythm; a measure or beat of movement.
In our marching band days, it was the rhythm the drummers played to keep everyone marching together in formation when the music stopped.
Steven and I knew–the moment we saw our little girl bouncing in time to some unknown beat on the ultrasound–we knew she was our Cadence.
And even then, it was obvious that our girl had the music in her, too.
At three, she not only knows the words to well-known children’s ditties like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, You Are My Sunshine, and Jesus Loves Me. More importantly, she routinely belts out renditions of the Foo Fighters These Days, Adele’s Set Fire to the Rain, Katy Perry’s Roar, and she can sing half the songs on the Les Miserables soundtrack.
There’s not much that can slow down our little Energizer Bunny. But a beautiful piece of music? That can stop Miss Cadence dead in her tracks. And she is not above practicing, practicing, practicing until she learns the words and gets them just right.
So, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that Cosette has tapped in to the Romano music vein. She’s one of the family after all.
And this family believes, as Mama Cass once crooned, “You gotta make your own kind of music…”
Lori Romano 