Day 262: I can’t imagine my life without . . . the silly songs of the Longhurst clan.
Today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day, and it would be logical to make Pirates of the Caribbean references, since it’s my favorite Disneyland ride and we’re at Disneyland this week, but much more important than adding “argh” to all of my sentences, today it has been one year since my mother-in-law joined our family members on the heavenly side of our family tree.
My in-laws loved to sing together. In fact, that’s how they met. They raised their large family to have a love of music. We begged them to sing for us whenever we got together, and today I’ve been IMAGINING them performing two of their songs.
The first is called The Froggie Song; an a cappella duet sung by two frogs, filled with soprano trills and baritone ribbets.
“Oh, I am but a wee froggie.”
“And I am another.”
“That old lady on the log-“
“She’s our darling mother.”
“Daddy got his legs cut off.”
“A wicked Frenchman ate them.”
“Naughty, wicked cannibals!”
“How we froggies hate them.”
“Knee deep. Knee deep. A Very deep. A Very deep. A Very deep. A Very deep.”
“We are two happy froggies, singing in the ponds and boggies.”
“Knee deep. Knee deep. A Very deep. A Very deep. A Very deep. A Very deep.”
“When we hear a naughty boy, in we go, kerchoo.”
I once suggested that the last word should really be kerplop, since the frogs are jumping into the water. You’d have thought I was suggesting singing it in Russian. Zenna very kindly told me that the Froggie Song is not to be messed with. Lesson learned.
Their posterity keeps this silly song close in their hearts. It has served as their theme song and it will never be forgotten - or messed with - by me, or anyone else in the family.
The other song is a medley that Zenna pieced together and taught her young children for a talent show. Those children are now of a more mature age, yet they can still perform it with flair. I will never forget Zenna’s face when the song came to the lines that were reserved for Bill to sing, who hammed it up more and more as the years went by. She would blush at his antics and wait for the invariable wink he would send her way. It just happens to be a pirate song, so it’s a fitting silly song for today, too. He would switch back and forth between his gruff pirate voice and the falsetto lines of the maiden, Jenny Lee.
In his falsetto:
“Who’s that knocking on my door? Who’s that knocking on my door?”
In his pirate voice:
“Well, it’s only Bill from over the hill,” cried Barnacle Bill the sailor. “I’m old and tough and dirty and rough,” called Barnacle Bill the sailor.
In his falsetto:
“I’ll come down and let you in. I’ll come down and let you in, I'll come down and let you in,” called sweet Jenny Lee.
And then there would be the wink for Zenna.
Bill suffered from Alzheimer’s the last few years of his life. It became harder and harder for him to sing the songs the family loved so much. Friday is Alzheimer’s Awareness Day, and we will be imagining him, with all memories and song lyrics fully restored to his personality.
We have missed Zenna terribly this year, but IMAGINING her, reunited with her sweetheart, and smiling while he croons his way through their songs, makes the missing a whole lot easier.
We miss you, Mom. We miss you, Dad. Thank you for your gift of music.
And in they went, kerchoo.
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