Alison<\/a>” came up on my CD player’s shuffle. I don’t know why that particular song calmed her down at that moment; I only know that it did. So I did what any new parent quickly learns to do in that situation: I put it on repeat and played it over and over. And over.<\/p>\nBy the third time through, I was singing along. The fourth time through, I’d changed the name of the girl in the song from Allison to Abigail, my daughter’s name.<\/p>\n
On the fifth repeat, I realized just how inappropriate the song was for a father to sing to his daughter, so I started making up my own lyrics. Within the span of an hour, Abigail and I had agreed on our new lullaby. From that day forward, any time it was my turn to rock her to sleep or make an owie all better, that was the song I sang.<\/p>\n
That was our song. I’m sure you have one, too. One that your parents sang to you, or one that you sang to your children. Maybe you invented your own song. Maybe you passed down your parents’ song, or maybe you adapted or transformed it. But you probably have a song.<\/p>\n
Bruce Springsteen had a song.<\/p>\n
It was a song his grandmother sang to him when he was very young. It dated back to 1909, and amazingly the original recording still survives. It was written by Bobby Heath and Charley O’Donnell, sung by Ada Jones and the Peerless Quartet, made popular in the Broadway musical Miss Innocence,\u00a0<\/em>and it’s called “My Pony Boy.”<\/p>\n