(I wanted to get this posted before Mother’s Day, but I didn’t.)

   

The Swing

by Robert Louis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it’s the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!!

When I was a kid, little, 3 or 4, I got a swing set for our backyard on Five Mile Line Road in Penfield.  My dad and uncle assembled it and put it in the ground.  It wasn’t much of a swing set when compared to modern backyard playground edifices.  “A” shaped supports, about 6 feet tall, on each end with bars to climb onto, a ladder in the middle for climbing over the top, a seesaw to be situated on a rung of the ladder, and two swings.  I loved the swings.

When my mother pushed me on a swing, she would sing the words above.  I can still hear her sing them.  It is one of my earliest audio memories.  I had no idea until I looked it up today that the words were a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from a book called “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” but I remembered most of them.  When my mom sang the words to me, I imagined them.  On every push I would look out at the field behind my Gramma’s house where we lived, and be positive I was seeing rivers, trees, brown roofs, and green gardens.  And castles.  I though Mom was singing “castles” not “cattle.”  I’m sure she was, in fact, because she loved imaginary castles as much as I did.  Trying to see the castles is a wonderful memory.

This post is not about swings.  It is about my mom and how she had a song for virtually every occasion.  My wife Linda soon became aware of that and said so to me.  She was so right.  Being a kindergarten teacher gave Mom a songbook of little kid tunes.  I remember many rounds of “Jesus Loves Me” being sung.  Singing for hours on car rides.  We sang sheafs of Christmas carols, of course.  But there are two special songs I need to remember and share because they meant so much to us kids in the 50’s and then our kids in the 70’s and 80’s.  The first one got my daughter Jan in trouble when she was a little girl.  Gramma had taught it to her, and she wanted to share it in the neighborhood.  It goes, “Once I went in swimmin’, where there were no women, and no one to see, clothin’ I was loathin’, so I hung my clothin’, from the willow tree.  I stepped into the water, just like Pharoah’s daughter, stepped into the Nile.  Someone saw me there, and stole my underwear, and left me with a smile.”  It was a song that always left us laughing.  Jan should not have been sent home for sharing it.

I sang the other song I want to share at Mom’s funeral.  I sang, “Alice where art thou going?/Upstairs to take a bath/Alice with legs like toothpicks/and a neck like a giraffe./Alice stepped in the bathtub/pulled out the plug and then/Oh, my goodness!  Bless my soul!/There goes Alice down the hole/Alice where art thou going?/Blub blub blub.”  As I sang it, my siblings joined in, and we brought the house down.  A very funny moment at a wonderful memorial for our mom.

My mom loved to sing.  My mom was a song.  A song of love, and joy, and caring, and humor.  A song saying all is well, fear not, just sing along.  Happy Mother’s Day a bit late, Mom.  We love you.