Oma

My mother, previously referred to as Mom and now Oma, has a huge repository of children’s songs and poems stored in her noggin. A vastly greater collection than my own though I recognize almost all of them from my youth. My daughter Clara retains a song or poem delivered to her by Oma on a much more frequent basis than those spat out by me. This is true even if the delivery source is secondary, say via Skype on a laptop. While my own delivery is top-of-residential quality — accompanied with guitar whilst Clara takes a bath, reinforced by bath tile provided reverb and presence.

What Clara does take from me is an inclination to improvise. For my part it is a necessity as I only remember a line or two of most songs. Sometimes I break into a song just based on some repetitive thing Clara is jabbering about. She will improvise. Or sing to herself jibberish while playing with her dolls. But if she is trying to learn a new song or knows one particularly well and it is at the top of her play list, she will be vigilant about keeping it tidy and orderly.

Sometimes in the bath I sing directly about her situation, usually to suggest the consequences of her not taking her own initiative to wash her hair, back and belly. At first I sang about the scariness of having Daddy wash your hair, “it’s scary but I don’t care” was a successful line in a bath song I wrote whose melody I’ve since recorded (I have a whole song’s worth of lyrics but it’s about bath toys and shampoo). It was successful in that from that event on she has been a brave little bath warrior about washing her hair.

I taught her “Buffalo Gals.” But now she is trying to re-teach it to me with cropped lyrics. She would like to forget that the whole second part exists (well it’s the second part in my rendition –there’s probably a zillion verses that I have no idea about). It’s the part about the rockin’ girl whose stocking has a hole in it. It’s a great part of the song. A bit of a tongue twister though and I think that’s why Clara skips it. We have fights about “Buffalo Gals” that usually end with her singing the first part and then me singing the second part with her singing the first part over it louder.

Our current favorite is “Teddy Bear’s Picnic.” I always loved this song but didn’t have it memorized –I don’t retain a fraction of what Oma has on hand at any given moment. I have it memorized now. Clara has the first part down, however I’m starting to get concerned that we’re doing “Buffalo Gals” all over again.