"Why don't you sing for us?" Aunt Sophie would ask me.
Grandma agreed with enthusiasm every time, "Oh yes."
'You are My Sunshine' was my favorite song for those occasions, and I sang it the best--at least that's what I was told (I knew far better than 'Rain, Rain, Go Away'). I sang it every time they asked.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine," perked up, back straight, I enunciated every syllable. "You make me happy, when skies are grey."
The notes were high. I tried my best to make it sound like the professionals that sang the national anthem before baseball games.
Slowly, I continued "You'll never know dear, how much I love you."
Every time I sang the words, or heard them sung, they pulled me in. I didn't know who wrote them or why they were so powerful, but they effected me way more that I would have guessed.
"Please don't take my sunshine away."
Sometimes, after singing, I went inside to the bathroom and cried. I cried because I thought about how much I loved Grandma, how much she must have loved me. Each word in the song made complete sense to me. At nine years old I knew what love was, I thought, the warm eyes and subtle smile Grandma wore as she watched me, the lips of Aunt Sophie singing along. They though of someone taking them away from me hurt me deeply.
Most pressing in my mind was the inevitability of their death. Not soon, I didn't think about that, bad things were saved for some time in the future. But one day I knew I would be thinking back to those very moments wishing to relive them just once, to go back in time for only a minute under the tent as I sang, as Grandma watched me and grew proud for a reason I didn't know. I knew that one day I would be attempting to remember the wrinkles in my aunt's smile and the way Grandma sat, legs touching, soft hand held together and tucked between them.
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