Jennifer Hambrick

Harmonica

“The harmonica’s a folk instrument,” my father once told me, when I was a girl, “and you learn to play folk instruments just by playing them.”

My mother often chided him for singing off-key in church and for whistling around the house in a raspy non-whistle more like the wail of a cheap tea kettle than a stream of music.

But on the harmonica my father found true pitches that rang out in tunes from his childhood – “Wildwood Flower,” “May the Circle Be Unbroken.”

He sang through the instrument.

in the wooden box
my late father’s harmonica
autumn chill