Granny's Lullaby

Ho sheep, ho sheep, where's the lamb?
Way down yonder in the valley.
Butterfly, butterfly picking at its eye,
Poor little thing cried Mama!

Mama says when she goes away,
Take good care of her baby.
When she comes back, she'll bring a piece of pie.
Poor little thing cried Mama

I was rocking my baby and singing this lullaby to her a couple of days ago. I know it's a strange one, but my granny used to sing it to me and she sang it to my mama when she was a baby. I also remember Granny singing this to my sister on one of the few occasions that Erin would permit such things. So, this song has always had a place in some of my best memories. I guess that is partly because I remember lying soft in my granny's lap while she rocked and she would sing and it was really peaceful. The other reason is because she would usually change the next to last lyric to "bring a piece of pumpkin pie" (my favorite) and I always have been a big fan of food.

The other day though, I was singing this song to Cayton in the way that I've done so many times. She was snuggled up in her blanket and her eyelids were fluttering and, against my will, I slipped back to my childhood and I suddenly missed my granny so much. I don't think about her a lot because she's gone and I don't like to dwell on things I can't change. But, for a minute or two, I spent some time thinking about how I would have liked her to meet my baby and hold another generation on her ample, grandmotherly lap. It would have been nice to hear her take on whether or not Cayton is similar to me. Or, if she couldn't remember, it would have been quite a moment just to hear her sing this silly old song that I imagine she picked up in her own childhood.

As is common with these types of memories, it came and went in a second and I was left feeling a little sad really. Granny was a big part of my childhood since I grew up in a small town and she lived maybe a mile or two from my house. So, when I think of growing up, inevitably thoughts of my grandmother pop up and, nine times out of ten, I end up laughing about something she said or something she did. Often as not, I just get really hungry because she used to cook for me all the time and it was always something that I wouldn't eat now because of my ongoing efforts to avoid becoming, as she would say, "as big as the broad side of a barn".

I guess maybe when I was thinking about her, I realized that my granny really had quite a lasting impact on me. While this wasn't such a groundbreaking revelation, it was significant in that I could see that she gave me something that I can take with me. Not only do I have a healthy appreciation for salt pork and buttermilk biscuits with gravy that tastes so good you'll slap your mama, but she passed along that silly little song that ties past generations to this. So, while my girls won't know my granny in person, they will know who she was and how she touched my life. I think she'd be happy to know that her song lives on. That, and I can make some mean buttermilk biscuits...