Things handed down ...

• Here Comes Granddad Again: Part 2 by James Brody, 3/12/97
  
  

I heard the following lyric on Mothers' Day, 1996. For obvious reasons, I immediately awakened and spent nearly a year tracing the original. It's available on a CD by the author, Marc Cohn as well as on one by Art Garfunkle, "Songs from a Parent to a Child"

The Things We've Handed Down

Marc Cohn

copyright 1993, Museum Steps Music (ASCAP)

Don't know much about you

Don't know who you are

We've been doin' fine without you

But we could only go so far

Don't know why you chose us

Were you watching from above

Is there someone there that knows us

Said we'd give you all our love

Will you laugh just like your mother

Will you sigh like your old man

Will some things skip a generation

Like I've heard they often can

Are you a poet or a dancer

A devil or a clown

Or a strange new combination of

The things we've handed down

I wonder who you'll look like

Will your hair fall down and curl

Will you be a Mama's boy

Or Daddy's little girl

Will you be a sad reminder

Of what's been lost along the way

Maybe you can help me find her

In the things you do and say

And these things that we have given you

They are not so easily found

Oh, but you can thank us later for

The things we've handed down

The things we've handed down.

You may not always be so grateful

For the way that you were made

Maybe some feature of your father's

That you'd gladly sell or trade

And one day you may look at us and say that you were cursed

But over time that line has been

Extremely well rehearsed

By our fathers and their fathers

In some old and distant town

From places no one here remembers

Come the things we've handed down

The things we've handed down.

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