Fanfare for the Common Mom

Sadly, especially for those in earshot, I can’t carry a tune, but a tune can certainly carry me. The right song at the right time can psych me up or settle me down. “We will, we will, stomp you!” blaring over loudspeakers was just the right pre-game juice during my high school basketball days. James Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves” or “Carolina in My Mind,” or actually, anything by Sweet Baby James, will do the trick on a melancholy Sunday afternoon. And for classic inspiration, Aaron Copland always strikes a chord, especially his triumphant “Fanfare for the Common Man.” I recall putting it on my playlist, (well, my cassette tape mix,) as I drove off in my Cutlass convertible, the top down, as I was going to take the SATs, on my way, anxiously, to conquer the world.

In more recent history, I dug out Copland’s “Fanfare” to lift me up in those grim, wordless days following 9/11, hanging hope and healing on the spare eloquence, the melody’s simple three note progression that slowly rises and builds, falls, and rises again. Copland, in his creative genius, does what great artists are able to do—hold dichotomy, embrace tension, and express it in an accessible, in this case easily hum-able, form. Soaring brass meets grounding percussion. His layers of dissonant harmony are at once both pure and piercing, elegiac and exuberant, as much solemn ode as rousing hymn. “Fanfare” doesn’t just stir my soul, it punches it. Fitting, I suppose, for a war song.

Copland composed his greatest hit in 1942, to honor those everyday men of the “greatest generation” who served with duty, honor and sacrifice in World War II. Granted, his classic has endured, but the generations and conflicts have shifted. Today’s battles, at least here on the domestic front, are less black and white; the soldiers are men and women. What would it be like to hear an updated, more feminized “Fanfare?” One that expresses the discordant tensions of modern, civilian women tired of fighting, or even talking about, the so-called “Mommy Wars.” What symphony plays for us Baby Boom stragglers and the valiant gals of Generation X who feel called to service and sacrifice, at home, at work and in our communities, but who lack the validation of “fighting the good fight” that our grandfathers had?

Copland’s tune resonates with me because I understand the tension. I know the this/but-not-this feeling, the striving for harmony between the major and minor chords in my life as a woman, a mother, a writer. Beside my desk is a plaque with a popular slogan that my sister gave me: “Well-behaved women rarely make history,” it chides. Yeah, I know. I read this every day and am alternatively pumped and bummed out. Once upon a time I envisioned myself as subversive and bold, but my fourteen-year tenure as a suburban, minivan mom has dulled my edge. For the most part, I behave, just as did the long line of strong-willed, well-mannered women I follow. As I catch myself telling my daughters, “Behave,” as they head out the door, instinctively echoing my mother’s admonitions to me, I hope they might somehow hear it differently. That they will not just blindly follow someone else’s rules, but behave as girls who are sure of themselves, as young women who know what’s at stake, what’s expected of them, what they are capable of.  

While well-behaved women may rarely make history, they typically, at least in my observation, make pretty good moms. They are the reliable ones who aren’t late for carpool, who know 65 ways to serve chicken, who stay grounded enough to keep their family grounded. These women, along with the more heralded mavericks, are also my heroines and inspiration, though they garner no mention in history books. There are no plaques or bumper stickers lauding them.

So many progressive women I know have chosen to rock the cradle rather than rock the boat, but I believe, at least in this realm, we can “have it all.” Mothers can creatively and boldly shake things up, for parenting is subversive. There is meaning and purpose and opportunity to push the envelope in the mundane things I do as a mother, wife and role model for my daughters.

Copland elevated the everyday to its rightful grandeur. With
resounding drums and just a few plaintive notes—poignant and clear—his fanfare strikes a common chord. As such, perhaps it doesn’t need updating after all. Maybe it can inspire us, the well behaved and the renegade alike, beyond the “I am Woman” refrain toward a “We Are Women” harmony.

One that holds together divergent voices with a unifying tension as it
incrementally builds, stronger with each note, until a hopeful, promising drum roll brings it on home. 

Stephanie Hunt is a freelance writer and mother of three daughters.

~Stephanie Hunt