Day and Night and Other Dreams

Sometimes you find a children's book that is so special, you never outgrow it.

Day and Night and Other Dreams, a slim volume of classic children's poetry, is one such book. It came with a cassette tape of the poems set to music sung by the Matanovic family, Nancy Rumbel, and friends. I bought the book/tape set for Emma when she was four years old after discovering it in a clearance bin for three or four dollars. I was attracted by the soft pink cover of the book, the romantic front cover illustration, and the description: "Performed by a Fine and Curious Company of Singers and Players".

So sweet and pure and joyful is the singing on the companion tape, that I believe it scooped up the poems like so many magical seeds and planted them deep in Emma's soul, establishing a secret bounty there of childlike joy and innocence that continues to sustain her, even now that she is 17. She still listens to the tape, still sings the songs in the midst of her daily activities, still lingers over the classical paintings illustrating the book, still finds new connections with the poems.

For instance, after a horrible experience of being dangerously dehydrated while she was in Italy this summer, she had new insight into "Little White Lily" by George MacDonald; these two verses particularly fit:

Little white Lily

Droopeth with pain,

Waiting and waiting

For the wet rain.

Little white Lily

Holdeth her cup;

Rain is fast falling

And filling it up.



Little white Lily

Said, "Good again,

When I am thirsty

To have nice rain;

Now I am stronger,

Now I am cool;

Heat cannot burn me,

My veins are so full!"


Despite their power, I don't think these poems could have become part of her the way they have if we had not been living on 18 acres of mostly-wooded property in Louisiana--with a full complement of wild and domesticated animals--for the most important years of Emma's childhood. The poetry and the music and the wildness seemed to join hands and form an enchanted circle that moved protectively around her, while she, barefoot and fairy like, danced in its center.

As she "danced", I re-connected with my own childhood in the woods, which I wrote about in A Place of Enchantment.

It is strange to think how much Day and Night enriches our lives, and yet it was only by chance that it found its way to us, I think. . .

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From the beginning, my favorite song has been "I've Been Roaming" because it seemed to describe Emma so perfectly. I discovered last week that it actually was first published in a book called Lilian of the Vale. I read a portion of it before and after Lilian sings "I've Been Roaming," and was amazed at how much Lilian reminded me of my Emmaline, even down to escaping through her window at night to wander in the moonlight. As her mother, I worry and scold her for this. It's my job. Secretly, though, the girl in me, the girl of the woods and bayou, dreams of joining her. In our nightgowns, holding hands, we would go singing through the newly-mown hayfield to dive into the moon floating ghostlike on the quiet pond.

"Lady Moon, Lady Moon, where are you roving?"

"Over the Sea."

"Lady Moon, Lady Moon, whom are you loving?"

"All that love me."