A Bushel and A Peck

Okay, so yesterday I told you how I had received another sign that I knew was meant only for me. I still am not certain what it actually means, but I just know that my Mom is trying to show me something…

There’s this song… a song I know as well as I know my own name.  This song is my earliest memory and the most comforting sound I know… I was a sickly and colicky baby and my Mother would walk the floors with me  night after night, doing her best to soothe me back to sleep. Of course I don’t remember these early memories of my sleepless, sick nights. I just remember feeling safe in her arms and my (her?) two favorite tunes that she sang to me over, and over, and over again…

As I grew older, the songs continued. They were always the songs she’d sing when I would wake from bad dreams (I had a lot as a child, a very vivid imagination), or when I was sick.  Her calming voice in its overly-vibrato style soothed me from whatever woe I was faced with. One of the two songs was a favorite in French… ‘moi j’aime papa… moi j’aime mama… j’aime mon petit…’…

The other song was a 1950 song from Perry Como called A Bushel and A Peck. I just learned this information Sunday. It has taken me 35 long years to figure out the history of this song.

Why is it important? Well, to many, it is just a song. An unknown song of very little importance. It wasn’t widely played, after all, it was 1950. To me, it represents a bond between a mother and child. From the time I was an infant, until… well, I remember hearing my Mom hum the song to me as I slept in the hospital after a scary episode with a staph infection when I was 20 years old, this song has been woven through the very fabric of my life. It was Our Song.

When my Mom would write me long letters, long after I was married and living in Venezuela, my Mom would sign the letters:

Love you, a bushel and a peck,

Mom

She would always reference the song… it was a special bond between us, a bond that I took for granted and never questioned. Where did the song come from? How did she learn the song? Who sang it? Were there more words to the song? Where were the answers to questions I forgot to ask for 29 years… the answers that I still yearn to know, despite knowing that she can no longer tell me…

Or can she?

Let me ask you something: do you believe in angels? Think about it for a second… do you really believe? Or would you like to believe but think it is probably not possible that there are angels among us???

I thought that way for most of my life until the feather appeared. The red cardinal over the years strengthened my belief. Sunday’s movie was a much needed reminder, too…

If you’re doubting the presence of angels, let me just ask you something…

Have you ever seen the wind?

You know it is there, as it effects the weather, it tousles your hair…
But you cannot see the wind.

Yet it IS there. Of that I am certain.

Just like I’m sure there are angels among us. I don’t see them, just as I don’t actually see the wind… but I don’t need to. Seeing isn’t believing in my book…

So now you know that there is this song that my Mom used to sing to me, that I always loved, and that was a very obscure, unknown song. A year after she died, I gave birth to a very sweet little boy who also had a very colicky temper. Guess what song I sang as I paced the floors with him every night? The song I would sing at a whisper to help him drift off to sleep? The gentle ‘I love you’ melody that explains that I love him more than absolutely anything else in the world…. and even a ‘peck’ more!?

Yep, Our Song. Her song. My song. Now it is His Song.

Over the years I have tried to find out more about the song. Maybe I typed the wrong things into Google in an attempt to find it, because suddenly it appears after many years of nothing. Hmph. Strange.

It was a 1950 song by Perry Como. Strange because my Mom was born in 1949… could it have been a childhood song for her too? I called Grandma to confirm my suspicion. Sure was…. my chest and eyes swelled with emotion to learn that this song was used by Grandma to soothe her first-born, headstrong and very vibrant child. My Mother.

‘I love you…
a bushel and a peck…
a bushel and a peck…
and a hug around the neck…
a hug around the neck…

and a barrel and a heap,
a barrel and a heap,
and I’m talking in my sleep,
about you…
about you…

‘Cause I love you…
a bushel and a peck,
you bet your pretty neck,
I do….”

So now let’s catch up. It is 2009 and I write a blog. A blog that I love but that is not ‘going’ anywhere because, frankly, I am all over the place. There is no mission with my blog, there is no ‘plan’, there is no thought whatsoever, though, maybe there should be. Nevertheless, I have this blog that I love. It has become something of a passion of mine and I love to ‘blog’. Somewhere during the year I began to hear about a movie called Julie and Julia that would tell the two true stories of Julia Child and Julie Powell, the woman who creates a blog to chronicle her odyssey into Julia Child’s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I loved the idea of the movie, the blog, and I absolutely adored watching Julia Child when I was little in front of the TV.

When the movie came out, I planned to watch it on Opening Night. Yeh, right, didn’t happen. Nothing like that EVER happens with me because I am a wife and mother and well… my ‘wants’ don’t get top billing…

So the movie ran its course in most theatres and people left and right have told me that it was a cute movie, that as a blogger I should see it, I would relate to it for several reasons, yadda yadda… Of course each time someone told me something, it was like a knife going deeper and deeper into the wound as I had already wanted to see the movie, desperately(!), but they beat me to it.

I came close to seeing the film once when the family headed out to see G.I. Joe. I planned to frolic off in my own direction and watch J&J while the boys watched GIJoe. Too bad that I had the timing all screwed up and I showed up late for J&J so I had to see GI Joe after all. Bummer.

Then last week I watched our little town theater listings all week and planned to go one day after work. Yeh, like that ever happened. I’m exhausted after work and thinking about dinner, and again… if I were a single something and could take in a flick after work, that would be great, but I’m not. I have mouths to feed that somehow have forgotten how to fend for themselves…

I didn’t get to the movie all week.

Saturday morning, I popped out of bed and showered, ready to catch the matinee and even save some $$ by doing so! Much to my dismay, when I doublechecked the movie times, JULIE & JULIA WAS GONE!

HORRORS!

I was crushed. I had missed seeing the movie and now would have to wait until it came out on VIDEO! Isn’t that just the worst? You don’t know when to expect it… you wait and wait, and then  you totally forget about it altogether… yep, has happened several times to me…

I was sad about missing the movie. Sad because I thought it would be entertaining, but also sad because I had a feeling that the movie was going to breathe inspiration into my unorganized blogging. I knew that I probably wouldn’t find myself blogging my way through Julia’s cookbook like Julie Powell, but maybe it would spur on another idea…

My little 6 year old dynamo reminded me Sunday morning that, “Mommy, there ARE other movie theaters, and I bet Julie and Julia is at one of them!” My God child, you are a genius. Why didn’t I think of that?

He was right. We loaded into the car and took off for the Woodlands where I would have to pay about 3 times more money to see Julie and Julia, but at this point, I was on a mission!

The movie did not disappoint. I loved it on many levels. Of course it was a cute chick flick, but I saw myself in Julie Powell, sad as that sounds. She was sort of lost, yet self-absorbed, yet lost… yet surrounded by opportunity. Hard to admit but that has definitely been me. She was entranced by Julia Child, as am I, and Meryl Streep deserves an Oscar for her portrayal of Julia Child… it WAS Julia on the screen, for sure…

And as I sat in the theater watching Julia serve her boned duck to a dinner party of appreciative guests, a little song began to play in the background music…

“I love you,
a bushel and a peck…
a bushel and a peck…
and a hug around the neck…”

My son looked at me and I looked at him. Both astonished.

“IT’S GRANDMA’S  SONG! IT’S GRANDMA’S SONG!” Yes, it was her song. Right there, all the words I had never known, all of the nuances to the melody that I thought were just her little ‘add-ons’, and so much more…

There was some reason that I had some powerful pull to that movie and that I felt so strongly about seeing it. There was something in that movie that I’m supposed to learn something from. That song, whose background and story has eluded me until now, was right there and crystal clear as if to say “BULLSEYE CASEY, HERE IT IS, I CANNOT MAKE IT ANY CLEARER THAN THIS”…

Yes I believe in signs. Now to just find out what the heck she’s trying to tell me!