by Maria Kouvarou

“I want to sing”

(‘Y’ & Mostafa)

Lullabies are usually sung to babies when the night is falling, the dark is arising and the doors to dreams are about to open. And still, regardless of this indirect association with the darker hours of the day, lullabies abound in light. It only takes some hearings of lullabies from around the world to identify the prominence of images of twinkling stars, of the moon, and of countless other references – direct and indirect – to luminous manifestations.

The reference to light, as this appears in the intimate form of lullabies, mirrors the light that floods the relationship between parents and their children, in itself a multi-dimensional construct that projects its sparkle to different directions. 

In the lullaby he wrote for his three daughters, Y. sings… 

“I am proud of you,

you who lit up my life”

… emphasizing one aspect of this luminous association. The happiness, the hope, the fulfillment parents experience through the relationship between themselves and their babies. Y. finds in his daughters the light that brightens his life and the strength to move on, taking a journey that will create the possibilities for a better future for them all. 

This, in itself, reveals another dimension of how light plays a central role in the relationship between parents and their children. And that is the brightness the parents want and wish for their children to have in their lives – both in the sense of enlightenment, as well as in the form of the light that will cast all darkness away along their way. Whatever the circumstances one might be facing, whatever the conditions one might be living in at times, light – in its literal and metaphorical sense – remains important for the well-being, the safety, the confidence we need as we navigate through life. Parents feel that deeply, and they express it by so often making references to it in the lullabies with which they sing their babies goodnight.

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