“Sweet Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair”

The lyrics to this Stephen Foster 1854 song are lovely, but I was too young to know more than the tune when I heard it sung to my mother Jeannie over a century later.

For some reason I’ve been thinking about all the songs that remind me of my mother. Honestly, I had never heard the full lyrics, or perhaps I have focused simply on the title. I did not know that Stephen Foster wrote the song either. It made me feel really stupid as I began to look on YouTube for the lyrics (with captions). Then I cried.