What is your songline?

"It's time to get up, it's time to get up, it's time to get up in the morning" my mother would sing to the tune of reveille. Repeat once with words and again with your own version of a blaring trumpet complete with “raspberry spray.” Despite the fact that my mom couldn’t hold pitch, she’d sing all day (even in the grocery store) and into the night even around the Girl Scout campfire (much to my embarrassment). Silly songs like do your ears hang low do they wobble to and fro will pop into my head even today at the most surprising times. I remember my brothers obnoxiously changed ears to boobs, can you tie em in a knot can you tie em in a bow accompanied by obscene gestures. Some of the Girl Scout songs my mom sang, like Make New Friends, taught me lessons. Some taught me history, like Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow about the Chicago fire. Others were just nonsensical like:

I'm a hayseed. My hair is seaweed.
And my ears are made of leather and they flop in stormy weather.

(What is it about my mom's generation and flop ears?)

Gosh oh, hemlock, strong as a pine knot.
I'm a senior can’t you see.
So what do you do on a Saturday night
when all the girls have gone to the fight
and a boy's best friend is his mother
fireman, fireman save my child
good evening friends
bow out

It wasn’t until preparing a slide show for my parent’s 60th wedding anniversary that I discovered that Gosh o Hemlock was a Mickey Rooney expression. Incidentally, Mickey Rooney owned the Downingtown Inn in my home town in Pennsylvania. I didn’t learn the origins of Big Rock Candy Mountain until I was teaching a history lesson about the depression. I realized then that my mom had replaced cigarette trees with sugar plum trees.This was our lullaby…although I’m not sure how the buuuzzzin of the bees helped us calm down for sleep.

My mom was what I always referred to as an instructional mom (as opposed to a snuggling mom). She wasn’t big on cuddles or hugs and never fussed over our physical or emotional pains. Perhaps that was her Midwestern German heritage. To this day she struggles with saying, “I love you.” When I say it to her, she stutters back over the phone, “Yeah, okay, well then, bye now.” She may not have been physically affectionate, but she taught us all we needed to know to survive in this world. She taught we four kids a slew of songs along with how to build a camp fire, ice skate, make buddy burners and sit-upons, dive in the deep end of the pond, peel an apple, sew a plaid skirt, dip beeswax candles…her repertoire was extensive. I realize now that I learned how to teach from my mom. She was leading us in hands-on, integrated, project-based learning in Brownie Girl Scouts before those terms and methods of teaching were ever acknowledged by the experts.

My favorite song Mom sang was, Skinnamarink. I liked it in part because I thought it was written just for me. I was quite a long thin drink of water when I was a kid and my parents called me skinny gink. Also, my mom sang this song to me in a low whisper just as I was falling asleep at night.

Skinnamarink a dink  a dink
Skinnamarink a do,
I love you!

Skinnamarink a dink  a dink
Skinnamarink a do,
I love you!

I love you in the morning,
And in the afternoon
I love you in the evening,
Underneath the moon…

Skinnamarink a dink  a dink
Skinnamarink a do,
I love you!