you'll find him most anywhere

When I'm at my sister's I sleep with the window cracked open. Indoors has always seemed stuffy to me so I'm always sitting by windows, opening and shutting them in turn depending on how much I can stand the cold. I can't wait until it's warm enough and I can move my office onto the back porch and sleep outside with my roommates.

My nephew is nearing eight months old and I still think he's the best thing to hit this planet. I love staring at him, watching him bobble his head about, scrunching up his face when he's tired, hearing his baby dinosaur sounds. And a smile from him is the sweetest gift. 

Sometimes I think of how old he is, think back to when he was born, and it's strange. He's so lovely and that time was so confused. Will I look at him when he's in his twenties and at the verge of some momentous life event and remember that time–just before him, right around his birth, all that's happened in the last eight months: my varieties of broken heart, my first days of my last semester at university and then my graduation, my stress, these decisions I'm trying to make. He balances everything out. He's all hope and potential and sweetness. Goodness gracious, I'm an aunt and I can love him like I've never loved anybody else. You might never see me as vulnerable as I will be when dancing around the room hoping to get a smile from him or showering him with kisses or singing every song I know the words to (false, actually, I restrain from singing the Kingston Trio songs I know because my sister doesn't want her child exposed to their adult content and language just yet).

Most of these songs I've learned from my mother, from the treasure trove of songs she sang to us for lullabies and for waking times. This certain one, Bobby Shafto, is based off a real person who broke a woman's heart, and she died from the breaking. But the wonderful thing about lullabies and folk songs that are passed down in oral tradition rather than in writing is that the words will change and then the meanings as well. My mother's voice of comfort never sang about that man in Ireland, to me it was about the moon brushing the dust off the knees of his victorian, threadbare, black smoking suit–it's always been a love song to the moon.

Bobby Shafto's fat and fair
combing down his yellow hair
you'll find him most anywhere
pretty Bobby Shafto


Bobby Shafto's gone to sea
silver buckles on his knee
He'll come back and marry me
pretty Bobby Shafto