My mother, the late Carol Fuchs, was a remarkable person, and I have any number of reasons to miss her. One of the less likely ones is her singing voice.
It wasn’t good, exactly, her voice. In fact, it was pretty horrible. Scarlett Fever had knocked out most of her hearing, and her adult life was punctuated by a series of ear operations and hearing aid innovations. Her deafness wasn’t evident in her speaking voice, but anyone who does any work with the deaf would have been able to tell she was a lip-reader, moving her lips subtly along with the person she was trying to understand. And her singing voice went beyond just tone deaf.
I don’t know if it was due to her being half Irish on her mother, Hazel Ferrell’s side, or maybe it was a generational thing, but my mother definitely had a song in her heart. I remember two of her favorites were “Katie” and “Candy.”
“Katie” was a song delivered in a stutter:
K-k-k-katie,
You’re the most remarkable girl that I adore.
When the m-m-moon shines,
Over the c-c-cowshed,
I’ll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.
“Candy” was probably her favorite tune, and she sang it so off-key you had to smile:
Candy, I call my sugar Candy,
And I’m so sweet on Candy,
Cause Candy’s sweet on me.
Thinking back on it now, I’m proud of my mother for never giving up on singing. She knew it didn’t sound the way it was supposed to, but it didn’t matter. It was a way for her to express herself, and Lord knows she was never shy about that.
The fact that it made my brother and me blush was probably an added bonus for her.
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