There Were Two Little Babies Whose Names I Don't Know...

Strange title, right? Well, it's the first line of a song my grandma sang to me the other day. She was over at our house for her birthday dinner and while we were watching 'Singin in the Rain', someone came to the door for my parents, so it was just me and my grandma in the living room for a while. I've never really talked to my grandma before. I don't know why. I interviewed her once for an AP Psychology project, but I was a stupid high school senior and everything she said went in one ear and out the other. I didn't realize how precious my time with her was. But, the other night, I learned things about my grandmother that I never knew before. We started talking about her father and her siblings and the memories that she has of them, and before I knew it, almost an hour had passed. She had so many sweet stories of sitting around with her father, listening to his "beautiful tenor voice" sing these songs to her. She's getting older and starting to suffer from dementia, but she remembered one of these songs well enough to sing it for me. I didn't know my grandma sang! At all! You could tell that when she was younger, she had a beautiful alto voice. It was so special to hear her sing these things and watch as she remembered the times with her family, especially her father, who died when she was young.

There isn't really a grand ending to this post, I guess. But, I realized that this woman is more interesting than I thought, and maybe I've got more in common with her than I would have imagined. Who knew?