“Are you…wait…LUCY’S GRANDFATHER?” asked the server. Breakfast at LuluBelle’s and she’d made my day. I’d been there but once—a half year earlier—but Saturday morning, sans baby or buggy, Sara remembered.
Rewind a year….
We were still in the waiting room at the Northwestern Hospital and Jason had just announced the birth of a daughter. Hugging concluded, proud father having headed back to his wife, I burst out with the show’s theme: “I love Lucy and she loves me, we’re as happy as we can be. Da da, da da da, da da da….” (No one knows more than two lines).
I would sing it continuously, perhaps obnoxiously, for the next half day…until at 6pm or thereabouts, Stacy peered up from her bed and imploring “Dad, really, you need to stop. We don’t want that to be her theme song. ”It was 6:02 Chicago time, and I stopped on a dime. No pouting; no sulking of course. There were new songs and new life to be sung.
FAST FORWARD —-
People don’t generally associate Bogarts with dance, let alone the world of ballet. I share this, then, with utmost humility: Lucy Bohrer, now one, looks great in a tutu. (Not that she wears it daily, my granddaughter. This, though, was her birthday party and, elegantly, she dressed as the prima donna.
She was the reason, of course, we’d convened in Chicago. All of us: from local diaper-clad tots to friends and family, imported from Great Neck and Chappaqua and Cleveland— big hearts in a Little Gym…to love Lucy.
There’s something so special ‘bout first birthdays. Not only is everyone alive, but everyone’s reasonably young and…therefore… there! As such, glowing, she sat, my Lucy did, surrounded by parents and grandparents, an aunt and uncle and cousin, and all kinds of toddling friends, each with THEIR parents (still happy together).
So young…so vibrant, so innocent.
“Lucy loved being the center of attention,” Carrie noted, (me nodding). Silently, even proudly I wondered if she’d got it from me.
It all seemed so right. Standing on the periphery, watching with quiet confidence, my eyes captured the father Bonesy, stalwart and warm and the mother Rooney, my bambina…together… blanketing their Little One.
And with in her gentle quiet, Lucy Hannah Bohrer grasped it all.
—As she grasps me, I believe. My granddaughter, you see, is just at that stage. By scent she knows me, accepts my voice—and yes, when we go cheek-to-cheek, she smiles, feeling safe.
Kids: they know.
It was a wonderful time. From the tumblers like Joey and Bo that I knew through friends, to the irrepressible Max, Pride Of The Yankees… to my pretty ballerina, Lucy.
And it was, yet again, further proof that the world goes full circle:
We were driving to dinner just Friday: Stacy, Erica, Lucy in the basket…and the two of us. “Daddy,” purred Rooney, “..Do me a favor—sing your granddaughter a song!”
(A year later—and I thought she’d never ask)!
Exuberantly, triumphantly, the words just flew out:
“I love Lucy and she loves me,
We’re as happy as we can be.
Da da, da da da, da da da….”
(No one knows more than two lines)!
There’s a certain couple that I know.
They’re strictly lovebirds,
A pair of turtle dove birds.
He’s a guy who wants the world to know.
So ev’ry day
You’ll hear him say
I Love Lucy and she loves me,
We’re as happy as two can be,
sometimes we quarrel but then again
How we love making up again.
Lucy kisses like no one can,
She’s my missus and I’m her man;
And life is heaven you see
Cause I Love Lucy
Yes I Love Lucy
and Lucy loves me.
source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/ilovelucylyrics.html