Wanting to Cry, Occasionally

I have mentioned that I am a member of the Barbershop Harmony Society, although my quarter-century of world competition is now behind me, and although it is not the actual topic of this piece.  Having competed for decades at the highest competitive level of the art form, I am as aware of anyone how amazing well-done barbershop is at its best, which I link to, and how awful it is at its worst, which I won't hurt you with.

Of, course, I have often been asked to speak about the art form, and when I do I try to separate out the more complex musical attributes from the entire "other part", which is the story-telling nature of barbershop songs.  Barbershop is both.  It is the musical complexity of three male voices harmonizing to a melody in such a way as to produce a blend wherein you regularly hear more than four notes.  It is also the capacity to bring an audience inside the story that the lead singer is telling in his rendition of the lyrics.

Those stories are often unhappy ones, some of lost love, or lost family.  They are popular, at least among the singers, because they allow the performer to plumb the deep emotions that he has felt for an analogous situation in his own life -- in fact, we advise and coach performers to find that analogy to make them better at delivering the emotional impact of the song.

Accordingly, I have always made the point that barbershop singers value our emotional "lows" as well as our highs, because it is a form of exercise to experience the entire emotional spectrum and react viscerally to it.  So although this piece is not at all about singing, I wanted you to know where I am coming from; that I think it is valuable to experience real breadth of emotion.

What it is about is actually a television show airing on the TLC channel on cable.  The show is called "Long Lost Family", and is hosted by Lisa Joyner and Chris Jacobs.

Long Lost Family is an adoption show, an adaptation of a BBC production of the same name.  Both hosts were, themselves, adopted.  An episode typically consists of two stories, one handled by each host, in which an individual seeks a blood relative separated since birth (or extreme youth) by an adoption.  It may be a child seeking biological parents, or parents seeking children given up at birth for adoption -- both scenarios are common.

In each case, the subject has reached out to the show producers, having failed on their own to find the person or couple they seek to connect with, or being uninformed and incapable of doing the search themselves.  Early in the show, the subject shares with Miss Joyner or Mr. Jacobs everything they know or have found in their own unsuccessful attempts.  The assigned host then goes back to work to find the people sought.

The tools for finding people, even with only a first name and a date of birth, are pretty sophisticated in the hands of someone determined enough.  I may have mentioned, for example, that I am the secretary of my class of 1,000 at M.I.T. from 44 years ago.  In 2013, I started trying to find the 75-odd classmates whom the college had lost touch with.  Within 18 months I had found all of them, including one who didn't want to be found (I counted speaking with his sister as a form of success).  So it can be done.

But I digress, probably quite a bit.  These stories are all deeply emotional, not the least of which reason being that the parties themselves are emotional about it.  Imagine having to have given up a child for adoption when you were a teenager, loving the child for 40 years without any idea where he might have been all that time, or even if he wanted to see you.  Then Lisa Joyner comes to see you and tells you, softly, "We found him.  Yes, he wants to meet you."

The reunion scenes are amazing and touching.  I can't say if they have many failed reunions and select out the successful ones, or don't do stories on the ones where the found person doesn't want to meet, but it would be OK if they did.  Even produced and edited to highlight the drama, you can see the amazing, happy, stressful wonder is real, and amazingly tear-inducing.

The stories are striking even at their least.  In several cases the person sought has been within a few miles of the seeker all that time.  In one amazing case, a woman was seeking the mother who had given her up for adoption at birth over thirty years earlier.  She discovered not only that they had worked at the same hospital in Rochester, NY, but they had worked together and knew each other!  I can still remember when the host brought the picture of the mother over for the daughter to see, and she said with a shock "I know her!"

How would you feel watching that, knowing that the story was not a movie plot, but absolutely real -- the whole thing is quite real, and the flaws of the characters are quite there on display, where in the movies they would be played by glamorous and attractive stars?

How would you feel being the son in another case on the show, a young man living in Idaho, given up by a teenage Texas high school couple at birth?  You are contacted by the show, and discover that the couple stayed together after you were given up, married and had several other children -- your full-blooded siblings!  That reunion was a truly special moment, especially when the young man, now married, introduced his natural parents to their daughter-in-law -- and grandchild -- they never knew existed.

The producers of this show, to their credit, have been doing "follow-up" episodes from previous years' stories, to show what has been happening since the initial reunion.  I say "to their credit" because the stories don't always work out the way we wish they would have happened.  Remembering that in most cases, the person sought was surprised to have been found, we have someone searching for years for a relationship with someone unaware of their being sought.  That's not an ironclad recipe for success.

I confess that this show regularly brings me, a 65-year-old mature adult, to tears.  I also confess that it is why I watch it -- back to barbershop songs for a moment -- because the exercise of extremes in our emotions is a valuable practice, and seeing real, actual stories like these definitely taps emotions as extreme as it gets.  I have already learned that such extremes are healthy to explore.  So I value the situations -- whether a barbershop ballad or a TV show about adoptive family reunions -- where we can do that.

I do urge you to watch the show in its various iterations.  It is quite well done, and the situations are dealt with real sensitivity and without added drama -- the situations and stories are more than dramatic enough.  I'm not a celebrity, so I can't be a celebrity endorser, but this one rings a lot of bells with me.

Enjoy your weekend.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.