By heart

This morning's crossword puzzle had the clue "afternoon social time" and as I wrote "tea" my mother's voice came singing across the years '

"We're going out to tea today
So mind your manners well,
Let all accounts I hear of you
Be pleasant ones to tell..." 

And the poem ended with -
"And Fannie do be careful
That you do not tear your frock!"

Was it the name "Fannie" or was it the word "frock" that so intrigued me as a child? Or was it the concept of this mother instructing her children about a custom I only read about in books? Or was it the sparkle in my mother's eye as she recited from memory the poems from her battered brown readers that rested on our hall closet shelf? Was she remembering the days of her tiny schoolroom, lunch pails, clambering over fields and streams of Frogtown farms and the joy of learning?

Whatever the reason, she planted poem after poem in my heart, and they grew green and flourished.