Meadowlark

Yesterday as I was hanging laundry I was being kept company by two or three Meadowlarks singing in the hills above my house. I love listening to those Meadowlarks. It seems like they always come to me on those soft spring mornings when the earth smells damp and new, and the breeze is warm on my skin. The Meadowlarks remind me of someone, someone I never even knew, she passed away several years before I met her grandson, my husband. The first spring we lived in our house my husband’s parents were here visiting and the Meadowlarks were singing like crazy. My Mother-in-law stopped to listen and they went on to tell us that the small town she grew up in was named “Lark” after the Meadowlark and that her Mother always loved to listen to the birds sing. She went on to say that her Mother always told her that the birds were singing a special song that went like this: “Lark is a pretty little town…” over and over. Every time I hear the Meadowlark sing I can’t help but repeat those words in my mind “Lark is a pretty little town.” A year or so ago those words changed when I told my youngest daughter “Do you hear the birds singing to you? They are saying ‘Emma is a pretty little girl’”. She smiled, and I remembered a woman I never knew.