Music speaks to the heart. Sometimes I’ll hear a song on the radio that brings back a time from the past I’d forgotten all about. Thinking back on childhood, I realize what a big part of our lives music was. Grandmama loved music and was a really good pianist. She’d played the ukulele as a girl, and I think music played a big part in my Granddaddy’s courtship of her.

He was engaged to someone else when they met and had even completed a house and furnished it for his then-fiancee. But he met Grandmama, and that was the end of his engagement to “the other woman.”

He played the guitar until he lost his left hand in a hunting accident. Mama said he still played after the accident, because Grandmama chorded the neck for him.

She had a lot of sheet music. I can remember her playing “The Turkey Trot.” I still have the music. They loved to dance.

Mama sang. She sang in the car, the kitchen and the bedroom. She taught us all kinds of songs across a broad spectrum. She bought sheet music, too, and also played the piano. “Down in the Valley” and “You are my Sunshine.” She’d sing while she played the piano. We’d dance, too.

In the kitchen at night after supper, she’d have the radio on and would dance with a dish towel in her hand.

I remember “The Abba Dabba Honeymoon,” “The Little Brown Jug,” “Frankie and Johnny,” and there was always “Froggie Went A-Courtin’.”

Life just bubbled out of her.

Car trips were never dull. Even though the radio in the car was mostly static, we didn’t feel the lack because we had Mama driving.

We played word games and would sing “The Green Grass Growing All Around” song.

I remember standing in the backseat (this was before seatbelts), resting my head on the back of her seat and hearing her say, “Don’t smack that gum in my ear.”

If we were on a long trip, like driving to Norfolk to visit our other grandmother, we’d fall asleep in the backseat listening to the tires on the asphalt.

She’d be humming in the front, and it seemed as though she was harmonizing with the sound of the tires.

If it was summer, the car windows would be rolled down and the occasional moth would come in through the open window.

The next morning, the grill would be covered with dead insects and there’d be lots of bodies on the windshield where they’d “splatted.”

In the summer, after supper, we’d go out on the front porch and watch night come. We’d sit on the porch swing, and Mama and Grandmama Would sip iced tea in their rocking chairs and talk in low voices. Sometimes Mama would sing, and it was beautiful watching the light fade in the sky with Mama’s voice in the background.

When Matt and I would take the boat down the river, we’d sing as we paddled.

One of our favorites was “Onward Christian Soldiers,” because the time was just right with the paddle motion.

They gave us the gift of music, and I’m grateful for it, as it’s been an abiding joy to both of us throughout our lives. And because we love it, our children do. And so it will go on long after we are gone. This is a fact I derive a great deal of pleasure from.