The reason we sing

I was wandering the halls of my son's school one weekend as I awaited what was to be the first in a series of performances by my teens. The little guy . . . not so little, at 13 . . . had managed to snag the lead role in his eighth grade play, a Roman comedy by Plautus. Actually rather funny, as it turned out, and he did a great job with it.

It had been an American-suburban-parent afternoon, as I picked up my older son from an all-day rehearsal for District Chorus, and then drove him an hour-and-a-half across the worst traffic in America to swim team regionals, only to then turn right back around to make my younger son's play.

But as I meandered around his middle school, stretching my legs after three-and-a-half hours of kid-shuttling, I came across a sign. "Music," it said.