Song For Molly

Molly's sitting on her bed It's Sunday afternoon Radio's playing outside TV bleeds from the next room Antiseptic in the air Nurses laughing down the hall Crooked feet in crooked shoes Her wooden cane against the wall It's Sunday but her Sunday clothes Are packed away somewhere She doesn't need them anymore Nothing to look her best for I'm thirteen, I'm with with my mother She doesn't know my name I remind her I'm Lucy But she looks at me the same Like I'm a stranger she should remember From a place she can't return We've only just walked in She says we've stayed too long Too proud to be remembered As a mother without a home Oh, it's time to go Oh, it's time to go It's a dirty trick this growing old We walk the halls anyway My mother holds her arm She's pleading with us to leave So we walk her to her room And we drive through the old neighborhood The grand homes of the South Side So many are abandoned now So many lifetimes locked inside And at the dinner table It's my parents and me I sneak looks at the two of them To see what they need from me And later she calls me over Where she sits alone She's polishing a silver ring I've never seen before She says this was Molly's It was her mother's ring I'm keeping it for you As she kept it for me Oh, it's time to go Oh, it's time to go It's a dirty trick this growing old I'm told Molly was so proud to have Another baby girl Her only granddaughter But I don't remember This is what I remember --- Song for Molly - Lucy Kaplansky