When I was sick, my mother would sing me songs until I fell peacefully asleep. Not just when I was an infant and young girl, but even as I grew up. Even when I pretended it embarassed me. Even when I swore it wouldn't help, it always did.

Jesus Loves Me and some oldies tunes were always favorites of mine. My mother used to sing a song called 'Tammy', which was a favorite of hers when she was just a little girl. I'd heard her sing that song over and over throughout the years, and had even memorized the words and tune myself. It wasn't until I was twenty years old that I heard the original version of the song for the very first time. I actually called my Momma up laughing, because her rendition of the song was much better than the original, and I laughed too, because my version was a little off.

Momma's quiet lullabies have always comforted me. There was one song that has always hung neatly in my heart. Like a favorite old sweater - covered with fuzzies - but it's the only one that feels just right, when you don't feel yourself it's a song that does the same. It was a song from a children's movie. A song that would keep me aware, even when I was in so much pain I couldn't sit myself up. The song was 'Somewhere out there'.

In the movie, the cartoon mouse, is a young boy who's been separated from his family by tragic accident while en-route to a new beginning in America. The symbolism to our lives was so different it was identical. We're lost too. We're desperately seeking the 'promises' of better days, every day we wake to this world again. My Momma and I are more like best friends.

The litte mouse sings the song while staring at the wide night sky, and without either knowing, his sister is singing the song back to him from miles away. My mother sang me this song, sometimes when I lay ill and crying, sometimes when I was heartbroken, and sometimes just because she loves me.

I'm very close to my Mother. She's very often my strength and inspiration. Even though I'm grown now, I'm still very dependant on the family structure to keep me whole. I need to know that I can turn to her, whenever I need. And I can. (And I do).

Sometimes I know, though our homes are miles apart, we've each just finished praying for eachother, and we might quietly sing or at least have a thought of our special song - without even knowing the other has done it.

So now, Momma's quiet lullabies are quietly hummed to myself each night after I say my prayers. And when I get to my favorite part I sing the rest out loud.