Say, Say My Playmate

Sometimes I'll be sitting on the floor of Owen's bedroom playing with him when a song or rhyme I haven't heard since I was teeny tiny pops into my head, something like this:

Say, say, oh playmate,
Come out and play with me.
Bring out your dollies three.
Climb up my apple tree.
Slide down my rainbow
Into my cellar door.
And we'll be jolly friends
Forevermore, one two three four!

And I'm convinced it's my great-Auntie Mary joining in on the fun with Owen and me.



We always called her Auntie Mary, but she was really our third grandma. We were very lucky. She was an integral part of my life, introducing me to the joys of dunking cookies in coffee with cream, kooky fashions, rhymes, and the ever-important card games of Uno and Gin Rummy.

She died a month or so after Owen was born and never had the chance to meet him, but she had his photo pasted at the foot of her bed.

I miss her.