Mrs. Parker’s Front Step – Song Description
“No statue stands to mark her name.” The children in this song grow up and mostly forget to thank her properly before she’s gone, and for a while I worried that made the song read as a quiet accusation against them. I don’t think it does, on reflection, and I don’t think it should. Kindness like hers — a biscuit here, a genuine moment of real listening there, offered to an entire street’s worth of children over years — tends to get absorbed rather than consciously noticed at the time it’s given, which is probably the closest thing to proof that it actually worked. If those children had grown up carefully cataloguing every kindness she showed them, keeping score in order to repay it properly later, something would have gone slightly wrong with how naturally it was given in the first place. I wrote this one thinking, quite deliberately, of a few people from my own childhood I never got around to thanking properly either, and I don’t think that failure erases what they gave me.
Verse 1
Every morning
Half past eight
Mrs. Parker
At her gate
Apron folded
Silver hair
Morning sunshine
Everywhere
Verse 2
Scuffed-up knees
And muddy shoes
Untied laces
Schoolyard blues
Little biscuit
Gentle smile
“Sit a minute…”
Just awhile
Chorus
Mrs. Parker’s front step
Was never made of stone
It was built from little kindnesses
That made us feel at home
Some people build with bricks and wood
Some never even try
She built a place inside our hearts
That time could never buy
Verse 3
Summer evenings
Golden skies
Children chasing
Butterflies
She knew every name
Every face
Every dream
In our place
Verse 4
Autumn leaves
Upon the ground
School bell drifting
Softly down
She would wave
As we went by
Always time
To wonder why
Bridge (Key Change)
Looking back now
Years have flown
Only now
Have I grown
Not the biscuit
Nor the tea
It was kindness
Given free
Verse 5
One spring morning
Walking by
Quiet curtains
Caught my eye
Empty doorstep
Silent air
Something missing
Everywhere
Final Chorus
Mrs. Parker’s front step
Was never made of stone
It was built from open-hearted days
That made us feel at home
No statue stands
To mark her name
No history books agree
Yet half the good that’s left in us…
Began with her, you see
Outro
Sometimes when
The evening falls
I still hear
Those distant calls
Children laughing
Running free…
Outside Mrs. Parker’s house
And in my heart
She’s waiting there…
Just like she used to be.
Lyrics Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty