In the Shadow of the Pines

Let me now get back to Papa. I felt Mama was getting homesick for him and I was sure of it when she received a letter from him one day. Part of the letter she read to us, but I knew there was something else in it just for her. She had that certain look on her face that told me. I had seen that look before and wondered because it was always connected to something Papa said or did. Maybe I was too inquisitive - even nosey. But I slipped the letter out of Mama's purse and read it. Papa told her how he missed her, and re-told the words he had spoken when he asked her to be his wife as they sat on the grass under a tree. A pine tree I think he said.
Papa loved to sing and often sang as he worked. There was one song which always seemed to be just for Mama, and Mama would get that certain look on her face when he sang it. Through the years, I have listened for that song -the tune and words - whenever folk music or mountain music was being sung, but I have never heard it again. And I have become more and more certain it was Papa's own song - composed and sung just for Mama. This is the way the words of the chorus go:
"Come back to' me, sweetheart
And leave me never more.
Come back to me, sweetheart,
I love you as before.
On life's dark pathway
The sun no longer shines.
Come back to me, sweetheart
In the shadow of the pines." Excerpt from "I Remember Papa", Irene Rountree, 1982