"Jeannie (with the Light Brown Hair)"

[Both Mom and Dad are gone, but I discovered this old blog post from years ago while looking for family stories. Thought I'd replay it.]

Anyway, I'm working away last night on something, when the CD I'm playing offers me "I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair," an ancient piece of Americana penned by none other than Stephen Foster, I guess, 150 years old or more.

 Stops me dead in my tracks because I remember my mom telling me how, when they were courting, my dad used to croon that old tune to her, his own kind of seduction, I imagine, and hers. Her name, after all, is Jeannie; and she once had light, brown hair. Dad is gone, but I'm guessing if I'd play that old song for Mom today, she'd walk right in and sing along.

For a moment, something grabbed at my heart, even though I am myself likely the by-product of at least some bit of that seductive crooning. I never heard my father's sweet nothings, which is not to say I didn't hear his protestations of love--there was nothing cold nor reserved about my parents' affection.

In a Bible that belonged to my father for most of his life, I found a picture of his Jeannie in a swim suit. Much of what's packed into the pages of that tattered scripture is what remains of his World War II experience--some letters and even a picture of the Coast Guard tug he and a small crew ran all the way to the South Pacific.

In that swimsuit picture, my mother is holding hands with her two war-born kids, and they're on some Lake Michigan beach. It's a treasure, really, because that picture--and the Bible it was in--probably dragged him through the war aboard an old tug that rarely exceeded five knots all the way through the South Pacific. That, and the song, of course--"Jeannie with the light brown hair"-Sometime this morning my class will be looking at Tim O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried"; I'm thinking, I guess, about what my father carried.

But all of that is ancient history. Dad's been gone for five years. No matter. I'm a richer man for the memories the two of them gave me long ago--for the song, the tattered Bible, and the pin-up shot of his young wife, the one he left behind.

This morning I'm thankful to be so wealthy. All these little things are a part of the things I carry.

____________________ 

Go ahead and listen in--