Through the window — Lauren Decker

It is absolutely crazy to me that we find ourselves almost a year into our ongoing battle with Covid-19. Those first days of quarantine that felt so strange, the hope we’d all be back to business as usual in a few weeks.

It became pretty clear within the first week that the dream of a quick return to the theater was just that - a dream. After a few weeks of quarantining in our apartment in Chicago and our lease ending with my time at the Ryan Opera Center, my wife and I decided to finish out our quarantine at my family’s lake house in central Wisconsin. The lake house, which is the home my mom grew up in and grandparents use to live in, has always been a huge source of comfort to me. But, with that comfort and peace came the overwhelming sense of being cut off from my identity as an artist - something that dominated my life as a young artist for 4 years.

A picture of us through the window with the new member of our band, Poppy the pup!

My wife works in the creative aging field. The focus of her work is connecting with seniors, most of them living with some form of memory loss, through creative engagement. Covid-19 posed new challenges for her and her coworkers everyday. How do we help these seniors who are now isolated to their bedrooms? How do we help these care providers who are baring the brunt of this terrible virus? How do we find some happiness to share when uncertainty and fear are the foundation we are all standing on? As many of our conversations began to center around these complicated questions, we knew it was something we needed to act on, but how?

Singing. It always comes back to singing. Half way through our 4 hour drive from Chicago, Sam had already sent an email to the activities director at the care community near our temporary home. Within a week, we showed up outside the windows, ukulele and songs in tow, and began singing to the seniors.

Aside from being the one thing each week we got to look forward to while quarantining, our window recitals started to open my eyes to the power of music, the human voice and connection. A woman who hardly reacted to us the first week was tapping her fingers on the arm of her wheelchair the second week. And by the third week, she was singing along with us to “Let me call you sweetheart.” Another woman looked on each week with the brightest smile - her smile got me through so many hopeless days. Surely, if she could smile, so could I. One man loved patriotic music. And, when we would sing those songs for him, a sense of pride and purpose caused him to sit up straighter in his chair and cast us a humble “thank you” wave. We even started singing for a woman who spent WWII singing to the soldiers. She told us about all the incredible artists she met while traveling, all the interesting places she went. During our time together, her stories helped transport us all to a different place and time, one that we could be together in. She was moved to tears each week, not because we were the worlds greatest artists - though I’d like to think we got pretty good as a musical theater + opera duo turned ukulele + acapella duo - but because we were taking time to be together, something that Covid-19 was making nearly impossible.

I learned a lot more in those two months about the impact of music than I ever could on the beautiful Lyric stage with a house full of people. In a time it felt we all had nothing to give, we shared the beautiful pieces of our broken hearts. And in those pieces, came profound purpose for me.

A few weeks before our wedding, I got notice of a grant looking to fund artistic projects being led by women. And though my wife was juggling her full time job and the single digit countdown to our big day, she sat down with me and helped me write my first grant proposal - to create a series of collaborative recitals with seniors in isolation.

So now, one successful grant application later (Thank you Sam + Musicians Club of Women!), I’m so excited to start on this journey. I’ve got big dreams for what we could accomplish in this project - connection, music making, new relationships. I hope you will follow along as I share my journey with this venture - We’ll meet again : a collaborative recital project.

-Lauren