A New Baby Brings a Song to My Heart

Grandparents.com

Lucy is my first grandbaby, and her song just came. I didn't go looking for it. It found me. I was singing all the time back then, when my daughter was pregnant. "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" and "My Special Angel." "You'll Never Know Just How Much I Love You" and, of course, "Baby Love.” The baby wasn't even close to being born, but I was already head over heels in love. And people in love are known to do some strange things, like walk on clouds and burst into song.

I did both. The cloud thing was temporary, but the singing went on and on. "The very thought of you and I forget to do, the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do.”

This song lassoed me.

I woke up one day humming it, and I sang it constantly — when I was cooking, when I was cleaning, when I was alone in the car, whenever (and this was always) I thought of this tiny, new person I couldn't imagine, but already loved. 

The very thought of her dominated everything. It rose to the top of my consciousness like cream in milk. I'd shake it away, sometimes, but it always reappeared. "The mere idea of you, the longing here for you. You'll never know how slow the moments go 'til I'm near to you.”

And then she was born, a five-pound sack of sugar, so tiny, so sweet, and I sang it into her ear and rocked her to sleep day and night, night and day.

And the song became her song.

Now she is four and when I ask her, "Want me to sing you your song, Lucy?" she climbs onto my lap and rests her head on my shoulder and sings along with me.

Adam, her cousin, didn't have a song until after he was born, until after I held him and rocked him and fell in love with him, too. His song arrived unbidden one night. "You made me love you, I didn't want to do it." A funny song to sing to a baby. But the words are true. "You made me love you. And all the time you knew it. I guess you always knew it.” For I was too busy singing to Lucy to be thinking about a song for him. For months I rocked him to sleep to "Hush little baby don't you cry" and a lot of "Shh-shh-shhes" until this song floated into his room and into my heart.

And it was the right song for him, for us.

His sister, Charlotte, was born four months ago. I stumbled on a melody for her a few weeks before she arrived. Adam and Lucy were somewhere else and the radio was playing when I heard the tune that I knew was hers.”It's not the pale moon that excites me, that thrills and delights me. Oh no, it's just the nearness of you.”

I hadn’t heard this song in years and didn’t know all the words so I had to look them up. But I know them now and I’ve been singing them to her all summer. "I need no soft lights to enchant me, if you'll only grant me the right, to hold you ever so tight. And to feel in the night, the nearness of you.”

Megan, my fourth grandchild, arrived in the middle of July. She lives in New York City with her mom and dad, 220 miles away. I had no song for her and no hint of a song, not the first time we met or the second time or the third time.

I was back home cutting the grass and thinking of her when I found myself humming it. That’s how it happens.

“You are never far away from me. When we part I hold your memory. You linger in my dreams, when day has flown. And through the lonely night, I’m not alone.”

I haven’t sung it to her yet. But I will, soon. For now, though, I sing it to myself: “When two sweethearts care as you and I. There’s no sadness in the word, good-bye. Because you’re always in my heart my love, wherever I may be. You are never far away from me.”

I say the words. I picture her face. And I smile.