I don't know why, but I don't remember a lot of things from like oh 9 or 10 years old and back. I do remember a few things, but they're very gray in my mind and I'm not even sure I'm remembering it correctly. But every once in a while, something triggers a memory for me. A song, and smell, a sound...I just heard a sound that for one reason or the other happened and made me think of my childhood days either after school everyday or during the summer, all day long. My manager who sits near me has a small tape player at her desk that (she just told me) she got from a second hand store. When she got it, it came with a tape already in it, and she was just trying to do something with it and it kept playing some piano music. The sound of a cassette tape nowadays is odd to hear first of all, but that with the combination of piano music triggered the memories of my mom's voice students she had all those years of growing up. She also taught piano, but the recordings usually came from the voice lessons she gave. I do have a very distinct picture in my head of our living room in Flagstaff looking from the bottom of the stairs, or the top of the balcony upstairs or from the dining room. We had parquet floors and it stepped down in to the in the "dusty rose" (pink) carpeted living room with white lace curtains I used to hide behind and a big bay window that looked out to the beautifully landscaped front yard. Mom ran the Nola Collier Studio of Music (right mom?) with these voice and piano students for many years. She also taught at Northern Arizona University while we were in Flagstaff- but I feel like she enjoyed her home studio the best. Many of my weekends or nights were spent helping with recitals, master classes and also when she had to do juries (not to be confused with jury duty). We only had one car and so dad and I would take mom to Ashurst Auditorium at NAU for these different events. The thing that triggered my thoughts about all of this though is that mom would have Sis. Tobbler or other talented people (who I can't think of their names right now) play accompaniments while she recorded them on her tape player in her "studio" in the living room. This was to play for the students during their lessons if the accompanist couldn't be there for the lesson, or to take home and practice. (I think I named Sis. Tobbler in particular because I remember she would come for several lessons at a time, and while mom's students were warming up she would sit on the couch and knit or crochet or read.) Mom also would record the student singing so that they could hear themselves and learn the parts they were singing weakly in the tape better. I just remember that background sound of the tapes being rewound, fast forwarded, stopped, played, stopped, etc. in preparation for her next lesson. She was very organized. I used to love listening to SOME of the students sing (not all were good) and I began to memorize a lot of the songs; especially the Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables songs (although, I don't really remember them that well anymore) and other songs from the Basics of Singing book. So much so that, every once in a while I remember my mom calling from downstairs to me playing in my room upstairs to be quiet because they could hear me singing along and it was disrupting the lesson! oops! (I must confess that embarrasses me now... hopefully they just thought I was a cute kid and not annoying.) Some of mom's best students in my young opinion were Ervie Isom, Midori (I don't remember how to spell her last name), and Shayne. There were very many more, my mother has a way with teaching people how to sing. From totally tone deaf to almost bearable which is quite a feat. Even in her 73rd year she is still leading people in music. For the 1billionth time she's the ward choir director, and true to form when she is called there is no one in the choir and by the time she leaves there are 30-40. I remember my friends in the Flagstaff 6th ward saying to me that they loved to hear my mother sing, and if she made a CD of her singing they would listen to it all the time! Although she doesn't sing much anymore, I will always cherish those memories of her. Her beautiful voice, her Love of music, and her ability to share it with just about anyone.

And that cassette tapes were pretty cool too. So weird our kids will never know them...