AN: So recently, I, Asparagus, have become obsessed with this aria that Phillipa Soo performed for a Ham4Ham (it's a Hamilton fandom thing- I'm weird). It's by Aaron Copland, from his opera, The Tender Land, and it's called Laurie's Song. Anyways, I just had to write something about it and share it, so here we are. The link to Phillipa's performance is here: watch?v=9eWdjsKy_bE. I can just imagine America singing it the exact same way as her! A regular, non-Hamilton related version can be found here: watch?v=I1acVWbRXhg. Also, with The Crown coming out in a few short days, I wanted to remind everyone of where this whole journey started. Sorry for the long, note, but I hope you enjoy my ramblings!
America She rested her slender hands on the rotting fence with the chipping white paint, her engagement ring glinting in the Carolina springtime sun. She was never going to live here again, her childhood home where her family had eaten their meager dinner together every night. Everything was different now, though she supposed she had known it was for a while. Ever since Kenna got married, since Kota left them, since America left for the selection, since Shalom died, since America got engaged to Maxon, since the rest of her family had moved to Angeles, America knew that things would never go back to how they were when she was a small girl. Her whole world had once been contained within the boundaries of this dilapidated, white fence.
She began to hum an aria. The accompaniment ran through her head, almost as if there were a piano in her front yard. She had sung it at a few graduation parties, but mostly to herself. Before now, the words hadn't made much sense to her.
Maxon, who had been staring at their little house with an air of reverence, came up behind her and rested his head on her shoulder.
"What's that love?" he asked, entranced. She paused in her humming to reply,
"Oh, just a song I used to sing. Coming back here reminded me of it,"
"Sing it for me?" Maxon asked. America was not able to deny her fiancé much, and so she began.
"Once I thought I'd never grow tall as this fence."
One of her first memories was sitting on the porch with Kenna and Kota while Magda taught them. She wasn't old enough to be homeschooled like they were yet, but she had nothing else to do while the rest of her family worked. And so she sat on the porch, staring at the white fence, which was still bright and clean back then. She couldn't wait to be big, to be taught with her siblings, and to be able to see over the fence on her own. But growing up had seemed impossible and distant then, gazing up at that white fence.
"Time dragged heavy and slow."
The lessons dragged on, and America sometimes fell asleep in the sweet breeze to the soothing voice of her mother reading to Kenna and Kota. She was often bored, which was why she first came to love music. She would come up with sweet little melodies in her head or listen to the birds singing in the trees nearby. But America had felt like growing up would take an eternity; she had thought it would stay there forever, her white fence.
"And April came and August went, before I knew just what they meant."
On especially hot days, she would drink lemonade as a special treat from her mother. She would lay sprawled out in the grass, looking up at the sky. But she didn't know to savor the bittersweet taste of the lemonade, or the look of those white fluffy clouds, or those days she spent without a care in the world, content inside her white fence.
"And little by little I grew."
Soon, America was taking lessons right beside Kenna and Kota. Then she began playing piano for hours, and she would sing, and she would play violin. She played from a method book at first, but as she grew she played Beethoven and Mendelssohn and Bach. But she was growing, and her fingers learned to fly over the keys and strings, and the music flowed through the air, out into the world, past her white fence.
"And as I grew I came to know how fast the time could go."
She was no longer bored. She always had music to practice, or a performance, or would go to the treehouse to sing with the birds where she thought no one could hear her. And quickly, she became a teenager, and a professional musician, and the object of a boy's heart. But it seemed only yesterday that she was a small girl, shorter than her dirty white fence.
"Once I thought I'd never go outside this fence."
Aspen heard her when she was singing with the birds up in the treehouse. And when they met up there, she couldn't imagine ever going anywhere else. She couldn't imagine being with anyone else, and she couldn't imagine travelling outside their city in Carolina. But she couldn't begin to imagine the life she would one day live outside of her white fence.
"This space was plenty for me."
At midnight, she would lay in the treehouse with Aspen, gazing into space, the stars glittering over them. America remembered how it had felt like they were the only ones in the world. She remembered how they had naively thought they could go anywhere or do anything if they simply were together. There was no reason to go when Aspen was right there, inside their white fence.
"But I walked down that road one day,"
Her mother had dragged her to the province office to enter the Selection. She had looked back at the dirty white fence and the treehouse as they walked down the road. She had been in love. She hadn't wanted to leave. But she had a premonition that everything would change when she got whisked outside her white fence.
"And just what happened I can't say."
That first night in the palace gardens only a few weeks later, that night her life had irrevocably changed, she had looked up at the stars in the sky. She didn't know why, but suddenly she didn't miss Aspen so much. A small flash of hope passed over her. Looking back, she realized it was the first time she had felt something for Maxon. But she had pushed it away, because how could she have possibly wanted something outside her white fence?
"And little by little it came to me."
The little things he did won her over. He listened to her complaints about the way things were, he came running when he thought she was hurt, he unexpectedly brought her strawberry tarts. In the world of sparkling dresses, glittering jewels, and plush carpet, his gilded cage, it came to her. But, not wanting to leave Carolina behind, she still clung to the days spent inside her white fence.
"That line between the earth and sky came beckoning to me."
And when the chance to fall in love with the Prince beckoned to her, she took it. She told him it was possible. Inside, she knew falling in love was more than possible. She had already started. But she found that she didn't seem to care that, if she fell for Maxon, she could never again live inside her white fence.
"All the time has grown so short"
She really had only known Maxon for a few months when they got engaged. In a matter of months, her world had changed more than that small girl who used to be her could've imagined it would over a whole lifetime. But the time was so short, the time she had spent outside the protection of her white fence.
"The world has grown so wide"
After he proposed to her, when she was alone on her balcony, she stared at the horizon, trying to picture her home was somewhere beyond it, far away. But she could not, because it wasn't her home anymore, that small house enclosed inside of that white fence.
"I'd be graduated soon"
America would never graduate from anywhere, she had been homeschooled, and hadn't been completely finished with her education when she went away. But she was going to graduate from the world the small girl of yesterday had played in, the world completely contained inside that white fence.
"Why am I strange inside?"
Standing with Maxon, in the front yard of her home in Carolina, she felt like her center was shifting. Her world was changing, and it felt so strange. This fence, the importance of which had been lost on her for her whole life, suddenly seemed to represent everything she was leaving behind. But she felt strange, so nostalgic about this white fence.
"What makes me think I'd like to try"
Grown up now, America saw her childhood flash through her mind. It seemed so perfect. So safe, so happy, so uncomplicated, and the only thing she had to worry about was learning. Why had she ever left that stage of her life? She had started to be pulled into responsibility, but why had she finished the job? Why had she wanted to grow up? But she had been ignorant of how good her life had been inside this white fence.
"To go down all those roads beyond that line"
The first road of growing up she had ventured down was earning money. She had started worrying about her parents' finances, how much work she could find, if they would have enough money to buy small Christmas presents for May and Gerard. Then she fell in love, she ventured down those roads of relationships and adulthood. First Aspen, then Maxon. But when she went, she had never thought to look back at this white fence.
"Above the earth and 'neath the sky?"
She felt Maxon's comforting hand in hers, grounding her, as she looked up towards the sky, overcome with emotion. His warm presence made her realize why she had chosen to grow up, why she had chosen to leave her innocence behind. It was opportunity. Opportunity to be something more, to find someone she wanted to spend her life with. Maxon was why. He was why she was choosing to leave Carolina and her white fence behind.
"Tomorrow when I sit upon that graduation platform stand, I know my hand will shake when I reach out to take that paper with the ribboned band"
Next week, when she was married, she would be standing at the altar, in front of the whole world. She was completely sure that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Maxon; in fact, she had never been more certain of anything in her entire life. But she knew that she would be shaking when she reached out to put a ring on Maxon's finger- not only because of all the cameras, or all the important people watching, or the fact that history would have its eyes on her for the rest of her life, but because it was such a personal change, and it would irreversibly cast her outside of her white fence.
"Now that all the learning's done,"
America would really never stop learning. She would learn about being queen, she would learn about Maxon, and she would learn how to be a mature adult. But her period of "learning" with her mother and her siblings inside the white fence was over.
"Who knows what will now begin?"
No one could predict what the reign of King Maxon and Queen America would bring. They hoped it would bring peace, prosperity, and equality to Illѐa. Things could go horribly wrong in an instant. But America knew one thing for absolute certain: she and Maxon would always stand by each other's side, just like they were now, by this white fence.
"Oh, it's so strange"
Her home was now truly at the palace. This house in Carolina felt like a distant memory. Her days inside the white fence had been reduced to a feeling. That warm feeling of the sun on her face, the wind in her hair, and the grass tickling her skin was what she had left of her childhood inside this white fence.
"I'm strange inside"
That feeling would be enough. She wanted to let her children have that feeling someday. But, at the palace, they wouldn't have anything quite like her white fence.
"The time has grown so short,"
Though the image of the future with marriage and children she had once imagined with Aspen had been more normal, the image of her future with Maxon, as monarchs of Illѐa, was so close now she felt like she could reach over the white fence and grab it.
"The world so wide."
There was nothing she couldn't do, nowhere she couldn't go, literally and figuratively, with Maxon by her side. Her adorable, vulnerable, puppy-eyed, sweet, caring, chivalrous, loving Maxon.
Bittersweet tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped onto the white fence. She missed who she used to be, but not as much as she looked forward to seeing who she would become.