An Oral Tradition: "You Are My Sunshine"

My mother tells this story: when I was a baby, my granddaddy (who by this point probably knew his health was failing) would come by our house after work to give me my six o'clock bottle. If I was fussy while my mother was fixing the bottle, he would comfort me with the song, "You Are My Sunshine." My mother's version of his rendition is perhaps exageratedly out of key, but the point she makes is this: the only one in the house who thought his voice was soothing was me. Sometimes my mother's story includes him singing the song with pleas of desperation towards the kitchen: "You are my sunshine, where's that bottle, my only sunshine, this baby is starving, Kitty, you make me happy, I said where is that bottle, when skies are gray." But mostly, the story is that my grandfather, who died when I was six months old, would sing this sweet song to me and since most of the memories of him during that time were, I'm sure, about doctor's appointments and hospital stays, it's nice to hold on to the memory of a lullaby. So, of course, I sing "You Are My Sunshine" to Sydney. And I hope to be able to tell her the story of her great-graddaddy with as much relish as my mother taught the story, and the song, to me.