Growing up, my lullabies were different than the standard fare. I did not have nightmares about my cradle falling out of a tree. Instead, my mom sang me the dulcet melodies of the Muppets favorite singer/songwriter John Denver.

I know every word of Annie’s Song and would drive down dusty Michigan roads screaming “country roads, take me home!” As a teenager in the 90’s, I often made fun of my mom for her lame taste in music. Kurt Cobain was vocalizing the pain and depression only a teenager wearing too much flannel can feel. The simple songs of grace from a washed up 70’s star who long ago fell from the charts were the furthest thing from cool.

As a new mom relatively late in life, the simple nursery rhymes of childhood were decades past my memory. I would hum a few lines, make up a few words and eventually make up my own songs to sing to my infant son. One night, on my fourth or fifth visit to his nursery to change and feed him, my sleep exhausted brain brought forth a long forgotten tune I knew in the marrow of my bones. “Almost heaven, West Virginia…”

Now that my son is a full toddler, he loves to sing. He often entertains himself by singing to himself in his crib in the morning. There is a sweet symmetry to hearing his little voice sing those honey notes. In those moments I am sure that if heaven isn’t in my home, I am almost there listening to the song long ago planted in my mother’s heart on my son’s