Singing With My Grandbaby

Researchers say that singing is among the most meaningful activities we share with children.

'I can’t explain the first song I crooned to my sleeping granddaughter, just hours old and bundled like a burrito in a hospital blanket and striped cap. Not Brahms, which would have been classy. Not a Yiddish folk tune, though I’d claimed the name Bubbe, Yiddish for grandmother.

No, it was a ballad I probably hadn’t deliberately listened to or thought much about in decades: “Surfer Girl,” by the Beach Boys. Maybe it welled up because of the lyrics (“made my heart come all undone”).

But lyrics can’t account for another oldie that materialized more recently: a 1957 doo-wop hit, “Mr. Lee,” by a girl group called (I had to look this up) The Bobbettes. It’s catchy, though hardly profound, and my granddaughter liked that little hiccup in the chorus. But even as I was singing, I wondered: Where did that come from?

Polling other grandparents about what they sang first, I heard about lullabies and children’s songs in several languages, about tunes learned from people’s own grandparents. “You Are My Sunshine” proved popular. Inspiration came from the Beatles, Dean Martin, Bob Marley and Barney.

My friend Dale might take the obscurity prize: She sang her still-tiny grandbaby “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?” — a British pop novelty. Dale isn’t old enough to remember when it hit the charts in the United States in 1961; she learned it at camp, a lifetime ago. But here it was again, as her children gaped.

Some folks planned what to sing, but for many of us this music simply emerged, unbidden and unexpected. It made me wonder whether barely remembered refrains get stored in some compartment of our brains, waiting years for emotional moments to release them.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/well/family/singing-with-my-grandbaby.html?