Give a Little Whistle

by Sarah Albrecht

I’m getting whistle wrinkles—fine lines around my mouth that exactly match my pucker. In a plastic-surgery culture, it has occurred to me that stopping whistling might forestall the wrinkles for a few years or possibly moderate their length or depth.

My mom says I started whistling as a toddler, trooping around in a cloth diaper with a tuneless wind blowing through my few front teeth. The tune evolved through the years, but it never stopped. Which would explain the wrinkles.

I have to confess I’ve let the tendency towards music slip in my life. I never learned a string instrument like I wanted to, never trained my voice like I should have, don’t make time between housecleaning and school and running to football and swim to play the piano. I don’t even have an i-pod to listen to the music I love. But whistling is always there, a pucker away—the opera my dad listened to on Sunday afternoons, his feet twitching on the recliner’s footrest; the Little Mermaid tunes my daughters have sung through early childhood; the violin my sons practice upstairs; the Primary songs and hymns ingrained in my soul.

Whistling is like wildflowers blooming in a fallow field.

I don’t think I’ll stop.