If you know Lucia, you know she loves California but she’s a dyed-in-the-wool Texan. No need for me to say anything more. We’ll just let old Ernest Tubb do the singing about that. Here he is, click the link below or hover over it with your mouse to listen:
When I was living with Lucia, she used to surprise me by spontaneously reciting poetry she had just suddenly remembered from her childhood. And once she had allowed it to surface verbally, it was firmly implanted in her memory — no mean feat for someone who could rarely remember having eaten breakfast on any given day.
This ability to conjure a poem or a song or a conversation from more than three-quarters of a century ago — and share it aloud as offhandedly as saying, “Pass the butter, please” — is one of the delights of spending time with Lucia.
When she first remembered and recited this particular poem, “If Ever I See on Bush or Tree,” her great-grandson Benjamin had just turned five years old and was getting ready to start kindergarten. She asked me to type it up and send it to him, in hopes that he would memorize it too. Alas, memorizing poetry as a way of learning to read has gone the way of slide rules in the classroom. But I sent it anyway. Exactly as she recited it to me:
If ever I see, on bush or tree,
Young birds in their pretty nest;
I must not, in my play, steal the young birds away,
To grieve their mother’s breast.
My mother, I know, would sorrow so,
Should I be stolen away;
So I’ll speak to the birds in my softest words,
Nor hurt them in my play.
When they can fly in the bright blue sky
They’ll warble their songs to me;
And if I am sad it will make me glad
To think they are happy and free.
Lucia learned this poem from her grandma when she was in kindergarten. It was written by Lydia Maria Child and published in the Beacon Second Reader in 1914, the year Lucia was born.
Lucia with her great-granddaughter Sarah Grace Gordis at Pixieland, 2007.
When I was little, I used to fake being sick just so I could stay home from school and be with Lucia all day long. She would sit at her sewing machine or work out in the garden and sing everything from Perry Como hits to church hymns.
Not too long ago she and I were sitting in my car, taking in the scenery near Sunol, and she started singing this song. I grabbed my cell phone and recorded her. I’m so glad I did. I never want to lose this one:
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