I can distinctly remember sitting in my car-seat in the back of my dad’s big van on the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I couldn’t have been more than four years old; the adjacent seat was occupied by another car-seat, and that in turn was occupied by my younger sister, Alyssa. Dad sat in the driver’s seat, and Mom in the passenger’s seat, and the familiar scenery flew by the right-hand window of the van.
My mother sang to us both from the front seat, a song that we had both heard several hundred times before and had come to master: “Maresy doats, and dosey doats, and little lamsy divey, a kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?” Alyssa, being about two or three herself at the time, probably didn’t quite understand the song, as I knew I hadn’t at her age. But I, oh, I was grown up, a full four years old, and knew that the words of the song were scrambled. I continued to sing with my mother the rest of the song. “If the words sound queer, and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey: mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy!”
I felt so powerful singing that song, and the words felt so funny and strong on my tongue. I was manipulating where the words ended, and completely changing how the song went! The lyric flow of “Kiddley divey” rolled off my tongue like fire – warm and smooth – and was always my favorite part in the song. We sang the song, and others like it, all the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and all the way back home. Though I loved to sing “I love you a bushel and a peck,” and (what I would discover later was my mom’s new take on a song from Bye Bye Birdie using our names) “We love you Manda/We love you Lyssa”, my favorite was always “Maresy Doats”.
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