Sing Me to Sleep

When I was little my father would sit on the edge of my bed every night, play his guitar and sing me to sleep. It wasn’t "Puff the Magic Dragon" or "Rock-a-Bye Baby." Dad sang folk songs, union songs, and songs like "St. James Infirmary" and "Frankie and Johnnie." So, instead of drifting off to slumber with images of sheep and rainbows in my head, I'd fall asleep with visions of John Henry, dying with a hammer in his hand, Frankie, a jealous woman, shooting her man through a hotel door, and men being carted off in horse-drawn caskets. But somehow, it was comforting, and I liked seeing the stories play out in my mind.

Recently, my mother had a CD made of my father performing folk songs on stage at The Second City in Chicago. He wasn’t a great singer or a great guitar player, but all of the sweetness he possessed came through when he sang and when he strummed. I listened to about 10 seconds of it, then had to turn it off.

So I’ll keep the CD on my desk until I can go there, back to when I was a little girl, falling asleep to the sound of my Pop's voice.

“Oh when I die please bury me in a milk-white Stetson hat, put a twenty-dollar gold piece in my watch chain, so they'll know that I died standing pat.” – One of my favorite lines from “St. James Infirmary.”