Sweet Adelines (2)

I feel like I made it sound like all we care about is competitions when I wrote about the my wonderful experiences with my various choruses of the Sweet Adelines. It is so not all about competitions, although they are exciting and fun. I feel like I know how those guys on American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance feel when the judges are pausing before giving the results. I am almost amazed that I can't see their hearts fluttering beneath their costumes, with my HD television.
But, the Sweet Adelines is about women coming together who love to sing. But who also love to come together. It is a great community.
I was supported with care and tears as I went through my breast cancer diagnosis and treatments. We have sessions where you get to sing with a quartet and someone else who sings your part is there just listening to you (kind of nerve wracking), who then coaches you on how you can improve in the special dynamics required by your part.
When someone gets sick, we send bountiful cards and e-mails and visits. Once we had a member in the hospital on her birthday and we called her after chorus and sang a special harmonized happy birthday song to her.
We are also encouraged to start our own quartets. We can have "kitchen" quartets, who get together whenever they can and learn a few songs. We can have quartets who learn a repertoire of their own songs and "audition" in front of the chorus. If we are good, we can then accept invitations to sing at events, when these occasions arise. We also have quartets who compete regionally with the hopes of getting to the international stage to receive that coveted title "Queen of Harmony". Then you get a crown to wear whenever you go to regional or international events. It means your quartet won first place.
But I think the best part of being part of a chorus, apart from the improvement in my own singing voice, is the time away from everything else, when I can forget everything in my own life and focus on something I enjoy with other women I respect and love.