We didn’t sing popular songs like Giselle McKenzie sang on television: “Shrimp Boats” or “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window.” (I like Giselle McKenzie, who seems beautiful and kind, even diminished in the small window of our TV screen in its big wooden box. I like her black hair puffed over her pale face, and her black dress à la Dior, the bell of the skirt a pedestal for her little waist, the simple black bodice. She tilts her head from side to side and smiles and sings at once, “Shrimp boats are a’comin’, we’re happy tonight….” She suggests an approachable glamour: herpretty dress, shrimp cocktails in tall chilled glasses, the lucky members of “our studio audience.” Someday I want to join a “studio audience.” I like her much better than the dutifully cheerful Dinah Shore, who stretches her mouth to blow a big messy kiss at the screen, and tells us to “see the USA in a Chevrolet.”)

We’d sit on the porch swing (said at each new address: It isn’t home till you hang the porch swing), and in the loveliest hour, the gloaming, twilight deepening into evening, we sang hymns: “I Come to the Garden Alone,” “Whispering Hope,” “Rock of Ages.” My mother always said, “I wish I could remember the one my mother used to sing, the one that goes, He’s a lily of the valley, he’s a bright and shining star,” but she never did.