A song from my Oma

When we were little, before my Oma left on her mission, she lived only a couple cities away from us, which made it easy for her to visit. We loved it. She would bring us golden raisins (for some reason much less gross than black raisins), beads to make jewelry, and do fun stuff. She was always singing songs to us that she remembered from when she was a little girl. She told us bedtime stories about her childhood, friends she had, growing up in Indonesia during the war (WW2), and describe the clothes her mother wore ("she looked like Katherine Hepburn, with her long, straight blazer and trousers, and she would put her hands deep in her pockets and hold a cigarette between her lips, so stylishly. She wore a cloche hat..."). I don't remember some of the songs she would sing us (one was about an Easter Bonnet), but our favorite one i remember.

Bayou, Bayou,

Bayou baby bunting,

Daddy's gone a-hunting,

To catch a little rabbit skin

To wrap my baby bunting in.

Oma would sing that verse over and over really softly until we fell asleep. I think her stories and songs have a lot to do with how strong our (all the Wilkinson kids') relationship is with our dad. She had several bad marriages, so in her eyes, my dad was the strongest, most reliable, most loving man on earth. It showed when she talked about him, and we learned it that way.