MY MOTHER SANG

          My mother sang the songs of the musicals, and she sang
them with panache.  Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe,
Irving Berlin, Oklahoma, Pippin, you name it she knew it.  And she
could be fickle, too!  One moment she'd sing "I'm gonna wash that
mind right outta my hair,"--then, a change of heart, a sudden
softening, and it was "Can't help loving that man of mine."  Female
parts, male parts, in between--she could do them all.  She was a
sprightlier Peter Pan than Mary Martin, had better legs than Mitzi
Gaynor, and was more enthusiastic than Ben Vereen.  She'd belt one
out, brassy, Gypsy--or Mame--then soft and fragile:  Send in the
Clowns.  I remember those days:  she, a nonstop whirling dervish of
show tunes, and I, eyes wide at the edge of the bed, her rapt
audience of one, flipping through her endless repertoire of tunes
with my imaginary remote control.  The gypsy, the acid queen, pay
before she starts--the new as well as the old.  Singing in the Rain, 
Cats, A Chorus Line, Teyve, Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins, Bloody 
Mary(is the girl I love), Sunrise Sunset, Bali Hai, Trouble in River 
City, Officer Krupky, Tradition--God that was a dream!
 

RICHH