Morning Bells Are Ringing

    I have to try to write about Mom again because tonight we sang "Frère Jacques," it reminded me of an event from about 57 years ago and I had a epiphany. 
   Epiphanies must be observed.

   There was a moment 57 years ago, or so. We lived in a clean little house in McLean, Va. Daddy was away at sea. My mother was in the front bedroom where my sisters lived. She was looking for dustbunnies, I think, under the beds, and she was singing: "Frère Jacques," switching back and forth from English to French. 
   "Are you sleeping, are you sleeping," she sang, "Father John? Father John?"
   I stood in the doorway and sang it with her, after her, learning it.
   Sometime later, one of my sisters must have heard me and corrected "Father" to "Brother." I don't remember that re-teaching, but I do remember deciding that my Mom had sung "Father" instead of "Brother" out of some Irish or Catholic tradition or bias. Her upbringing was specially influenced by both of those. She came from an older, better world than the rest of us.
   That someplace, Father was correct.
   How did we get into "Frère Jacques" tonight? I had been showing her photos of our grandbaby Clémentine, whose Mama is a native French speaker, and I'd told Mom how interesting it was to see the baby follow directions in French and also in English, and Mom had said, "I never knew any French," and I'd said, "Of course you do, silly" and then wracked my brain recalling French words I've known forever because she taught me: tout de suite, for instance.
   Somehow that train of recall led us into the "Frère Jacques."
   She repeated the phrases after me, singing after me. I would sing, "Brother John? Brother John?" and she would repeat, "Brother John? Brother John?"
   After maybe 15 minutes, she changed the final line.
   We sang, "Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Brother John? Brother John? Morning bells are ringing. Morning bells are ringing." But when I sang the ding-dong bit, she sang, "Father John. Father John."

   At once, that long-ago bedroom bloomed in my mind. I saw the bedspreads and curtains Mom had made, the wood floor, the dresser, the strange windows that opened outward from the bottom rather than sliding upward. I saw her crouching as though she'd been looking under the bed, one of her pretty hands pressed into the bedspread to hold her balance. In her light alto with its modest vibration, she sang the wrong words.

   Because she never knew any French.