One time our daughter Lauren asked her son how he might describe Kay. His answer was immediate. “Angels Ascending,” he said. Ah, how sweet, you say. But wait, there’s more. It was not long after that we received a call from said daughter worried about an excess if influence her mother had on her children.
The complaint had to do with Kay’s lullaby catalog sung to the grands when she puts them to bed. I had long since been banned from lullaby duty. The times I would pinch-hit for Kay all I came up with was “Stairway to Heaven” and “Born to be Wild;” lullabies good enough to sing to my own girls when they were growing up but were now deemed questionable. I blame the parenting craze for that.
What precipitated the call, you ask? The parents were in the car with the kids when they began singing, “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” The lyric sung by the grands began with the number ten and not the compulsory number in the title. To be sure of what they heard, the parents listened to a few more musical rounds until the number dropped to seven. The parents first inquired of each other to see if either of them had taught the kids that song, but both denied the charge. Then they questioned the cherubs in the backseat.
“Guys, where did you learn that song?” asked the parents in unison.
The grands got quiet. By the tone of the inquisition, they suspected trouble.
Then they blurted in unison, “Kayme!”
The horror. The horror. And straight to the speed dial the daughter did go.
As soon as Kay answered her phone the third degree began, though it did not last long. Kay laughingly confessed. On the night in question while the parents were out on a date and after the grands were tucked into bed, Kay began to sing her standards. But on this particular night, the grands were more amped up than usual.
Kay had come to the end of her play list, but those crazy kids wanted more. So she reached back to the long ago, and “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” bubbled forth; this from the grandmother who has never consumed a bottle of beer in her life. Now the song has a fixed place in Kay’s lullaby repertoire. You gotta love this woman.
It is my lot to live with an angel, the comparisons are glaringly obvious, but she is fortunate that I am able to hold her feet on the ground and keep her from ascending too high.
