"Sleepy Star" by Leila McGrath

My new lullaby CD is a soothing collection of traditional American, international, and classical songs for bedtime.

To order a copy, contact me at Loumcg@juno.com (or feel free to see me in person). Each CD is $15.

Here is the songlist:

1 Golden Slumbers* Thomas Dekker

2 The Eensy Weensy Spider*

3 Mozart's Lullaby

4 Baby's Bed's a Silver Moon

5 Brahms' Lullaby

6 Go to Sleep/Duerme Pronto

7 Billy Boy

8 Sweet as Honey* Leila McGrath

9 All Through the Night John Ceiriog Hughes

10 Frere Jacques/Are You Sleeping?

11 Mighty Lak' a Rose* Ethelbert Nevin and Frank L. Stanton

12 Lullaby Sidney Rowe

13 Mary Had a Little Lamb Sarah Josepha Hale

14 Mammy Loves

15 Hush, Little Baby*

16 Kentucky Babe

17 Sleep, Baby, Sleep/Schlaf, Kindlein, Schlaf

18 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Jane Taylor

19 Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral James Royce Shannon

Vocals, Piano, and all arrangements by Leila McGrath

*Accompanied by hearing-impaired vocalist, Layne Koeppel, age 7

Back Story on the New CD

Four years ago I began taking lullabies and restyling them for a CD project. The next year I did all the recording (piano and vocal), along with a guest singer--one of my students--a hearing-impaired 7 year old girl. Then it took countless hours and gobs of money to do all the editing (there is far more to be done with a child in the project), which included retouching, re-recording, and sound effects. [Cute note: one day a grasshopper got into the studio, and the recording guy said, "Guess you'll just have to go home today. I can't find that noisy critter!" But when I inquired whether he had grasshopper sound effects on disc, the answer was yes, and now one of the tracks has that as a background.]

So it was this seemingly never-ending project that sucked up money like a monster and gave none back. Once all of the work on my end was done, I was at a big standstill--to have 1,000 copies of the CD made professionally, along with graphic design, I would have to come up with another whopping $1,300, which I could never seem to get my hands on. And I don't like to ask to borrow from people, so the project sat, collecting dust, until my family overheard my plight recently and offered to lend me $800 toward it. That set the gears for "Sleepy Star" in motion.

So the last couple of weeks it's been back and forth between Leila and graphics guy Jason about which colors and fonts and backgrounds and wording and placement, bla, bla, bla. He mailed me proof after proof so I could see how it would look, and while it all continued to look better each time, the cover itself continued to look awful, no matter what changes were made to it. I got a hint from the manager that they usually offer only one proof, and I had already had three made. Can I help it if I have a picky eye?

By yesterday, I had learned through trial and error what did not work, and realized it was the photo I'd selected for the cover that was making it all wrong. Because it wasn't a great picture, nothing else made it look good. I recalled that Alexis had recently taken a bunch of photos of baby Johnny, and, having always had a great respect for the professionality of her work, asked to see them.

It was the very first picture she showed me. It was beautiful, it was perfect. It was mine! We asked Sarah for permission, and off it went to graphics guy Jason for the fourth and (hopefully) final proof (Jason releases a big sigh). If it were not for that photo, I'd be stuck once again, because it's so hard to find a really professional, updated baby photo that is good enough for a cover.

So as Jason works away on yet another list of changes at his desk, Leila hums away and fills her notebook with marketing strategies (can one lone woman do it all? she wonders) and dreams of all the work yet to be done on the selling end. In all the daze, I truly am rejoicing at the realization that I am an entrepreneur! My very first Second Business!

The Thing

Most normal people hear about their family going away and feel deep sorrow if they themselves cannot go. At first the sorrow hit me, that my family were going to lounge in a cabin for a two weeks in the mountains while I worked the daily grind, but immediately I realized what it meant.

A big house all to myself. Four acres of trails through the woods. A freezer full of food. Two Steinway pianos to choose from. A computer. A queen-sized bed. Satellite TV. A panoramic view . . .

"You know what, Dad?" I said, laying my gentle hand on his shoulder. "I'm going to do you a favor and watch the house for you while you're away, and take the mail in."

"Oh, that would be nice, sweetie," he said.

Yes, yes. I'm so benevolent.

In case you haven't caught on, it was really self-gratification that drove me to make the gesture. And you all know that self-gratification can have its consequences . . .

It was the first night at the McGrath castle. I had just muscularly pulleyed the chain attached to the bridge over the moat filled with crocodiles, reckoning myself safe from bandits and Scottish warriors, when it occurred to me that I was finally alone, with all the ladies-in-waiting and knaves and knights far away. Nothing could harm me now, particularly not the noise of a host of ladies-in-waiting and knaves and knights.

Into my royal bedclothes I hustled and settled down, after a host of enjoyable activities and indulgement in a feast fit for a king, for a long summer's nap. I danced lightly to the royal bedchamber and spread myself out, sighing contentedly. Both tower windows were fully open, and the evening breeze brushed my cheeks.

It was midnight. The typical bewitching hour, when usually the trolls and leprachons from the outer villages creep and assault the castle. But I had been assured the land had been scoured of dragons and all inadmirable beasts before the king's journey to the far reaches of Camelot . . .

But through the blackened forests surrounding the castle came a sound. It was a deceptive creature, this I knew, for it must have been surveying the lack of activity in the palace and waited for this quiet hour to make its advance. It had somehow known I was alone, that the king had gone away. This was no ordinary creature.

I sat up so suddenly that the country physician, Lord Bernhard, would later require at least a half dozen of his most potent potions to set me right again (all of which tasted most horrific, being concocted from horny toad feet and crow's feathers, and the like, so I am told.) Whatever the creature was, it was not one of the many animals surrounding the castle, which I knew of well . . . It simply could not be. This was large. Heavy. Its footsteps crunched like those of an elephant on hardened snow.

Immediately my mind raced faster than the archer's arrows at our last county tournament. The dungeonkeepers, Sir Timotheus and his lovely lady, were not in attendance on this particular night, for they had traveled abroad to watch over another castle, that of the famous ruler, Friar Graf. I was most certainly and horribly alone.

Suddenly the lack of pages and sentries and knaves and knights filled me with terror. Where are all the brave fighters when you need them? I thought, madly. I had never been trained in swordfighting and did not know how to use the rock hauler or crossbow . . . I was finished. A sitting pheasant.

Racing to the levels below, I took up a device known to reach law enforcers from even a far distance through a system of wires, and felt safe again, but suddenly realized that the castle address was confused and the castle's number was not in order and the king's address was not generally known, and it was the dark of night and deep in the forest and the law enforcers would never find me. In time, that is.

So I returned to the master bedchamber and awaited my disastrous fate. Would the creature finish me quickly, mercifully? Or would it eat me slowly, beginning with my little toe?

Then it came. Out of the forest it came. I saw a great shadow emerge into the moonlight from the edge of the forest, and into the pasture behind the castle it came and began stalking toward the back gate. Then it stopped. It seemed to look up at me, but then it bent down and . . . began eating the grass.

It was a doe. A very big doe. "Doe a deer, a female deer" I suddenly heard ring through my head, like children's laughter at my court jester's folly. What a fool I was. I knew there were deer and foxes and turkeys all around the king's castle to bring in sustenance for his feasts when needed, and I had still thought nothing in that category could make such loud footsteps unless it had been Grendel, at the very least.

I had been exhausted from singing and playing instruments all day with the village children, but now I was toast (a hardened bread thrust in the fire until blackened). I fell back on the bed and let out the breath I had been holding for the past ten minutes.

Life in the castle is not always a festival of roses, I can tell you.

Jim Wobbie

Shayna is an eight-year-old triplet with a knack for mommying things.

First it was dolls. She would push them around the house in baby carriages, feed them, sing to them . . . Then it was the new dog they got two years ago: Lucy. "Lucy's my baby! She's my Lucy Loo-Loo Boo-Boo Shoo-Shoo!" Shayna would croon, kissing the dog everywhere. She'd hug it and squeeze it and love it and pamper it and dress it . . . and I was the officiator the day they exchanged wedding vows in the livingroom, right in the middle of the piano lesson. Shayna is all about love.

Today she came to the piano and looked at me. "I had a baby," she said.

"Congratulations!" I said.

"He's in here," she said. Then I saw it. The fuzzy purple pocketbook hanging from her shoulder.

"Let me see," I said, and she opened it just enough for a peek. I frowned. I couldn't identify just WHAT it was.

"It's a water balloon," she said. And indeed it was--a very small one.

"You have a baby water balloon?" I sang.

"Uh-huh," she said. "And he has a diaper." I looked into the pouch, and the little balloon was wrapped partly in a small piece of cotton cloth.

"He's too little for a real diaper, so I had to use cloth," she explained. "Weird, right?" I told her it wasn't weird, because lots of people had cloth diapers (including someone I know very well). "He really does need a diaper," she added, "Because sometimes he leaks. And once in a while he blows bubbles."

"Does he have a name?" I asked. His name was Jimmy. "But he's a water balloon," I said. "Maybe his middle initials should be W. B., or we could make a name out of the initials. Wobbie."

She laughed. "Wobbie!" Once she put the names together with her last name, she laughed again at the sound of it.

"I can't take care of Jimmy right now because I'm going to play the piano. Here," she said, giving the purse to her sister. "Take care of him! DON'T pop him!"

Shayna played the piano for about two minutes before becoming distracted. "How's Jimmy?!" she shrieked to her sister, who was in the kitchen.

"He's fine!"

"Be careful with him!" she shrieked even louder.

"You're one of those worry wart Moms, aren't you?" I observed.

"Yes," she said, firmly, as though there were no other way to be. "Because you know what happened? Mom killed my last baby. She dropped it and it popped."

"Oh. I'm so sorry."

"Hold him gentle!" she shrieked again, at the top of her lungs. Then she went on to play her song.

The time ticked by, and her sister eventually came in for her lesson and gave Jimmy back to its over-protective mother. Shayna walked off and out the back door to the swimming pool area, and her sister because playing away at her own song.


Some time later, I turned, and found Shayna standing next to me, staring into my face. "I popped the baby," she said, matter-of-factly.

"Why'd you do that?"

"Well," she said, feeling foolish, "I was picking him up and he kind of slid out of my hands and onto the deck and kind of bounced and then he was all wet . . ."

"I'm sorry. Maybe we should have a funeral."

Shayna perked at the interesting idea and positioned her hands in prayer. "Here lies our beloved . . ." Then she gave up immediately, shrugging.

"Naa," she said, sauntering away. "I'll just make another one. He's not the first one I've lost."

"Wash Me"

I was leaving a piano lesson at the Worrell's when a voice arrested me from nowhere to be seen. The voice was masculine, coming from behind a screened window in the Worrell's house. It was the reknowned Trinidadian owner of the car detailing business we know so well.

"That car needs a MAJOR cleaning," he said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I never take the time to stop at a car wash," I said, my usual excuse for a dirty car.

But I found the comment got my conscience pricked. "Car Wash!" the cardboard signs read as I sped around a corner with teenagers waving them. All of a sudden, every other car on the road sparkled like a diamond, while mine was as dull and dusty as a front porch in Wisconsin.

Sigh. I pulled into a student's driveway, went into the house, and looked at my car through the window.

My student started playing her song, and suddenly my musician's ears perked up at a new sound: pounding feet above my head and boy's voices saying to each other from upstairs, "It's a Nissan."

"They're talking about my car!" I said aloud, and my student stopped playing and laughed. Sigh. I looked at it again. The dirty old piece of garbage-- Then bingo! I had it.

"Jake!" I shouted upstairs at my student's brother. There was a long pause while Jake assessed why the piano teacher might be screaming through the house for HIM.

"Yeah?"

"Could you guys clean my car?"

"How much you gonna pay us?"

"How much you want?"

There was a pause. "Ten dollars apiece!" a voice called out.

"No way!" I said.

"Five dollars apiece!" another shouted.

"I'll clean it myself!" I said, walking away from the stairs, though I knew that'd never happen.

"Two dollars apiece!" a more amiable voice warbled.

"How many of you are up there?" I asked.

I heard a boy count up the group quickly. "Five!"

"Done!" I said. "But you guys only have 20 minutes till I have to leave!" A barrage of heavy elephant feet came crashing down the stairs and out the front door. "But if you get a scratch on it, you all owe ME ten dollars each!" I commandanted at the fleeing herd.

The piano lesson was anything but boring while my student struggled away with Grieg and I gazed pleasantly out of the window at the scene.

At first they seemed to think all you need to clean something is a hose, so they squirted the vehicle madly for a few minutes before my student's Mom came out and enlightened them. One boy hurried down the street to his house for buckets. Another boy ran to get little kitchen sponges, all they had, apparently. Someone found lots and lots of soap, and in no time my car was coated with suds, top to bottom, with five energetic boys scrubbing away.

For a while there, work was most undoubtedly on their minds, but once they had covered most of the car's body, they realized there wasn't much left to do, and suddenly fell into a huge water fight. Buckets dumped on heads, hose shot into the back of heads, soapy sponges squeezed on top of heads . . . And that's how it went for the rest of the time.

Finally the Mom realized the car was still soapy, and came out herself to rinse it off with the hose. The aquawar continued. By the time I finished and went outside, there were five little boys, some with puffed-out peachy chests, others sopping wet from head to toe. One boy was rubbing a teeny spot on the car with his finger. "No scratches!" he announced. Another was shooting his face with the hose. Every one of them had excitement and pride on their faces.

"Thanks, guys!" I said. "That was so nice of you to do this for free!" I let the shock register for a second, then pulled out the money, which four of them gladly received, and one asked to have put in the trusted hands of Mom, as he was too wet to take it, and still enjoying the hose.

The car sparkled like everyone else's now: like a diamond. With pride, I rode down the street, clean, clean, clean.

It wasn't till later when it dried off that I saw the soapy residue left over, and still some Wisconsin dust here and there . . .

But to me it was worth a little money to see boys get outside, away from their video games and superhuman action figures and do a little work and have fun in the sun on a Saturday afternoon. When I was way down the street, they were still playing water fights.

And even the one boy who exclaimed that this was "akin to child labor in the factories in the 1800's" was having a blast. So maybe becoming one with history did even him some good, after all.

Flunk the Teacher

Creativity can be a good thing. For example, it can bring you happiness, change the way you think, make things wonderful all around you. And that's why I tried it: the creative thing. But those weren't the results I got.

One day while teaching I felt that monster of boredom attempt to swallow up me and my student. She and her three siblings were in "a rut", having played the same stuff for days now. It was time to be creative.

Little five year old Mollie perked up when I made my announcement. "Let's play a game called Test the Teacher."

"What do you mean, test the teacher?"

"You write down ten words, any words you want, and I have to come up with a sound on the piano to go with each word. Then you get to score me on every word."

"Cool!" she said, leaping off the bench and practically shoving me off my teacher chair. I gave her a piece of paper and a pen, and the journey began.

At first, the game was simple, no challenge to the tested teacher at all. Leila had to play something pretty. Leila had to play something loud. Leila had to play something fun. This was a cinch.

But then it came time to teach her nine year old sister, and her ten year old brother, and Leila started getting tougher stuff, like: "Fat", "Wind", "Rain", "Slapped", and--get this--"Disrespected". How is one to compete with children so brilliant?

The worst moment came when Ben climbed into the teacher chair. Little seven year old Ben. Now, one can't treat Ben like other children, you must understand, because he informed me a few weeks ago that he is a king, and he even has a crown to prove it. So I have to be very humble in his presence. Meanwhile, he has taken to commanding me.

"Play something from Broadway!" he began, then listened a moment, and scribbled down a score. The test continued. "Play something boring! Play something mad! Play something old!" The words were simple enough, and I thought at first that I had this one in the bag. But then the test ended, and King Ben thrust his assessment in my face.

Very unusual scoring. He gave me six A+'s . . . and the rest were F+. "What!" I shrieked, and he fell over, laughing. "Was I that bad?"

He shook his head disappointedly. "It wasn't good. It just wasn't good. Sorry," he said, sitting back and crossing his arms. (Now my question is, what's the use of the + when you get an F, anyway?) You know royalty is always well educated . . . my scoresheet came with a personal drawing of an ugly person crying and saying, "You got them roing!"

The only thing that spared me from a head-chopping was bowing before his highness in extreme humiliation. Down on the floor. This is not where any experienced pianist belongs.

Just hand me the employment section of Newsday.