Time Warp Tuesday: “Climb Every Mountain”

I am way late to this week’s Time Warp Tuesday. It’s been a crazy week, and also the only post in which I’ve quoted lyrics was that darn Glee post, AGAIN! Sheesh! I just can’t get away from that particular essay. There’s probably a reason for that.

But then I had a few minutes to myself and realized that I often post YouTube clips of songs that are inspiring me in some way. And I remembered this post, about climbing mountains metaphorically and physically. Again with the mountains! I suppose I write about Glee and mountains a lot.

I note in this post that I loved the song “Climb Every Mountain” from Sound of Music when I was young. If I really remember watching that movie, which we used to do every Thanksgiving weekend, that is a false memory. My favorite real song was “I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen”. In actuality, it was my parents who always insisted on turning up the volume when Mother Superior began her song of chasing your dream. I always remember my dad saying that the actress who played her possessed a singular gift for vocalizing. But I wonder now if that beautiful lyric and melody combination was more effecting to them than I realized. That it probably spoke to them, deeply.

While most movies and songs focus on new love, young love, betrayals, love lost and coming of age stories, there is not a lot of material for the “middle”. Most of life is “middle”: enduring losses, working exhausting and mind-numbing jobs (if we’re lucky enough to keep them), raising children (if we are lucky enough to have them), going through serious trials like financial crunches, and just the tedious monotony of our incredibly demanding lives, whether it be getting up at 5:45 AM to begin our days of driving, working, meetings, children’s activities and the exhaustion we feel when we climb into bed at 11:30 to sleep five hours to begin it all again.

“Climb Every Mountain” speaks to the middle. The wise mother superior, who has probably seen it all (except Nazis, but alas, that comes later), advises the novice nun to:

Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
‘Till you find your dream.

A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life
For as long as you live.

See, what no one told me is that after you achieve the dream you climb the mountain EVERY DAY. I am incredibly fortunate to have achieved my dream of having a wonderful family. But my dream of having a family does NEED all the love I can give, every day of my life for as long as I live.

And so an important, ignored phase in the circle of life is given words in this song. And I am grateful for them, because I so often need help navigating “the middle”.

Day 43: Climb Every Mountain

Like many impressionable young American girls, I grew up watching The Sound of Music. My favorite song from the film was “Climb Every Mountain”. It was sung by the Mother Superior and the song’s lesson was to  face your fears, climb above your struggles, and when you do, you will be free. The song still gives me the chills 20 years later.

The song famously plays at the very end, when the Von Trapps are literally climbing for their very lives, in hopes of escaping the Nazis.

Today, there was snow upon our closet mountain. Snow only falls every 10 years or so, so we decided that we would climb the path to reach the snow. I envisioned us carrying children on shoulders to make it to the frozen ice. Instead, neither child wanted to walk in the snow, or wear their sweaters or coats, although it was 35 degrees out. So constant battles ensued until we finally had to turn around without seeing the full winterland of snow.

It was disappointing, and yet I’m proud we attempted it. As a family.