A Little Bird Misses the Forest for the Trees

As the second of five children, one of the great treats of my childhood summers was to occasionally get to spend a few days by myself with my grandmother.  I called her Grammy.  She didn’t live far from us, maybe 30 miles, in the same town where my dad worked second shift.  I would ride along with him on the way to work in the afternoon, and when my visit was over in a few days, he would pick me up, in the middle of my night, on his way home.

Grammy was my mom’s mom.  She and my grandfather, along with my mom and four of her six brothers, had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1951, when my mom was fourteen years old.   Speaking to my adult mother, one would never guess that English was her second language.  Not so with Grammy.  Hers was a thick German accent, and even when speaking English, she would sometimes sprinkle in some German words.

On one of my visits, when I was eight or nine, Grammy announced that she was going to teach me a song to sing to my mom when I went home, a song in German.  It was a short song, just a couple of lines really.  I still remember it:

Kommt ein Voeg’lein geflogen,
setzt sich nieder auf mein’ Fuss.
Hat ein Zettel im Schnabel,
von der Mutter ein’ Gruss.

Grammy would sing and have me repeat.  She’d correct my pronunciation, and we’d do it again.  It plays in my head like a little movie:  walking in the yard, watering the garden, in the breezeway stuffing the feather pillows, around the table playing cards, singing all the while.  It was while we were playing cards that Grammy told me what the song was saying.  A little bird comes flying and lands on my foot.  It has a note in its beak, a greeting from my mother.  It sounds much better in German, doesn’t it? she asked.  Of course, it did.  The German rhymes.

I learned the song to my grandmother’s satisfaction, and she sent me home with instructions to sing it to my mom.  She would be asking me about it on her next visit to our house.  She visited us often.  I haven’t mentioned yet that I was a very shy child.  While I don’t remember having any trouble singing the song with my grandmother, the question of how I would ever work up the nerve to sing to my mom consumed me.  I thought about it constantly.  She would need to be alone.  When such a moment occurred, I tried to encourage myself to go to her and begin, but I never could.  My mom was not an intimidating personality; my grandmother could  be.  Why couldn’t I sing?

Then the day came.  When I woke up in the morning, I found my grandmother on the couch, delivered there in the night by my dad.  I knew the question was coming, and it did.  Had I sung the song for my mom?  I shook my head.  How about now?  Grammy got my mom’s attention, sent me to her, said I had something to sing. My mom was sitting at the kitchen table, and I stood before her.  We were face to face.  I don’t really remember singing, but I think I must have, likely while watching the floor.  To my amazement, my mom knew the song, as well as a second verse, which she sang to me with her arm around me.  It was a sweet moment.

Fast forward nearly forty years:  I was attending a program at our church which had an international theme. Each of the speakers spoke a little about her country of origin.  One of the countries represented was Germany. The speaker came to the US with her family as a three year old.  She didn’t speak German.  She was a musician and wished she could sing us a song from Germany but didn’t know any, so instead she sang a couple of selections from The Sound of Music.  I thought, I know a German song, not that I would ever sing it in front of a crowd.  My shyness has diminished over the years, but get real, not that much.  Maybe, though, I would tell the speaker sometime about how I learned that German song.

With this in mind, I thought back on the story I’ve related above, and I had a revelation.  Perhaps the reader saw this from the beginning, but it was truly the first time it had occurred to me, decades after I’d learned the song.  I was the little bird, sent with greetings to a daughter from her mother.  Grammy passed away just a couple of weeks after my thirteenth birthday, and I lost my mom only twelve years later.  The song was a sweet gift, and the memory, with its new insight, is like a little bird bringing greetings from beyond.

The second verse:

Liebes Voeg’lein, flieg weiter.                                            Dear little bird, fly on,
Nimm ein’ Gruss mit, und ein’ Kuss                               Take a greeting with you, and a kiss
Denn ich kann dich nicht begleiten,                              For I cannot go with you
Weil ich hier bleiben muss.                                                 Since I must stay here

P.S.   The song exists online and, in particular, on YouTube.  Every version I’ve found online uses Vogel instead of Voeg’lein (bird as opposed to little bird), but I stand by my grandmother’s version.

About The Author

Anita Dixon is currently the Regional Manager of the Educational Community Credit Union in Branson.  She earned her BA degree from (then) School of the Ozarks, and a Masters in Math from (then) University of Missouri, Rolla.  Besides mathematics, she has remarkable writing (and English) skills – and is the chief proofreader of our Weekly Photo/Sharing each week (though she has given up trying to get me to get my commas to behave, and  she cannot be responsible when I don’t get her a draft in time!)