“Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me
Anyone else but me, anyone else but me, no, no, no
Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me
Till I come marching home.”
Mother’s Day is just around the corner as I write this short story about mine. Ironically, it’s not the holiday that reminds me most of my mom. Except for the one right after her passing, when I stood in a Hallmark store picking out a Mother’s Day card for my mother-in-law and burst into tears, then hurried out the door to grieve somewhere privately. My mom wasn’t one for overly sentimental greeting cards. A simple love you for no particular reason, on any given day, was enough to make her smile. She also appreciated a shocking story, a sarcastic joke, a sharply recited limerick.
Once I caught her singing a bawdy tune about Buffalo Bill to my newborn daughter while rocking her to sleep. I reminded her how inappropriate that song was for a child and she said it won’t be remembered, anyway. I pointed out that we can’t be sure what babies remember and she added, “Well, I hope I’m remembered fondly.” I suggested she sing my daughter the one about sitting under apples trees that she used to sing to me as a kid. As a teenager too, until I begged her to stop. It’s a wartime song, but one she remembered fondly because her dad used to sing it at the top of his lungs if he’d had too much to drink. It’s a catchy tune, more silly than tender, yet it still gives me goosebumps when I hear it, which is next to never now. I have to go looking for it, and I did that when I flipped over the calendar to May and saw that past me had already circled Mother’s Day, lest I forget.
I read somewhere recently that music gives goosebumps to those who are hyper-sensitive. I’ve always been a sensitive type. More so than I remember my mom being. More like my dad in that way, I suppose. Sometimes when Mom’s humour got too risqué, Dad would tell her to quit pushing the envelope before she offended somebody or hurt their feelings. I miss hearing old sayings like “don’t push the envelope”. “Don’t step on my pink elephant” popped into my head the other day when someone was being a killjoy–another fun word rarely heard anymore. My dad often wanted things to be calm and perfect, including me. It was Mom who reminded us both that it was okay to be perfectly imperfect. To tell a bad joke to lighten an even worse mood. To sing a silly song too loudly, just for the heck of it.
To honour her memory, I chose the Mother’s Day weekend as the grand opening for my yarn store when I opened it in 2007. I spent a lot of time with my mom in the retail shops she managed over the years and I knew she would’ve got a kick out of me having a shop of my own. I also knew she was with me in spirit when I decided to close it fourteen years later. “Onward and upward,” she used to tell me after I’d made a tough decision or if my heart was broken. Onward and upward: another good, old saying. I’m sure it’s what I told myself that day in the Hallmark store.
Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree – a song made famous by Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters during World War II. This silly stage version makes me smile.
A Roaring Good Yarn 