One great advantage of having a talkative mother, is all the great stories you hear about the past, especially the times you weren't even around to appreciate.  My father, in his youth, was apparently quite the romantic...  a trait that still lingers to this day, which he seems to have passed on to me in a very big way.  If ever you thought serenades sang by men beneath their beloved's windows was purely the province of Hollywood and poets, you may consider yourself corrected.

My mother, always the willful one, was no easy catch.  She would feign disinterest in a most disheartening way to all who would see her, including my dad.  But my father, being a strong singer (both then and now), wooed her with persistance.  He would visit her often, and though she would not consent to see him, she could not help but hear his singing outside.  With patience and song, he eventually won her heart.

Beautiful Dreamer, by Steven Collins Foster, was their favorite... and it was after him that I was named.  The following is a brief biogrophy on Mr. Foster, which I shamelessly copied from the PBS website.

Stephen Collins Foster    1826-1864

Arguably America's most beloved and popular melodist, Stephen Collins Foster became the nation's first truly great professional songwriter, who managed to compose over 200 songs in his tragically short life. Born in Pittsburgh, PA on July 4, 1826, on the same day that both Presidents Jefferson and Madison died, Foster came from an an educated and relatively affluent family of patriots, though a sharp reversal in his father's fortunes forced the family to abandon the composer's idyllic birthplace when Stephen was a boy.

Despite the urgings of his father and brothers to enter the world of commerce, Stephen's inclinations remained musical. Throughout his youth he delighted in playing the flute, guitar, and, to some degree, the piano, in attending theatrical entertainments--among them minstrel shows--and in composing songs for a the Knights of the S.T., a thespian society he formed with his friends in 1844. That year also marked his first song publication, OPEN THY LATTICE LOVE, and for the next six years before his marriage to Jane McDowell in 1850, Foster's skill and fame as a songwriter steadily grew.

Determined to function as a full-fledged artistic and business professional, he rented an office in 1851 shortly after the birth of his daughter Marion. The next decade would prove a tumultuous one for Foster. There were incompatibilities in his marital situation that caused him to separate, reconcile and separate from Jane; his finances took a turn for the worse (owing largely to the lack of copyright protection), and his health also deteriorated, worsened in no small measure by his alcoholism. Saddened and conflicted by the outbreak of the Civil War, Foster spent his last years in New York City, living on the Bowery and writing songs for ready cash. When he died on January 13, 1864 at Bellevue Hospital, weakened by a severe shaving accident and fall, his purse contained thirty-eight cents and a scrap of paper with the scrawled inscription: "Dear friends and gentle hearts." Foster can truly be termed the trunk of the tree of American song. His roots reach deep into the soil of three continents; his branches span two centuries and stretch out toward a third. The songs he composed between 1844 and 1864 gave America a body of melodies so popular that while one critic complained of their omnipresence on the lips of our citizens, HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE ventured to dub them our national music. Translated into countless languages, the tunes re-outfitted with new lyrics for different occasions, Foster's works made their way across the vast frontiers of 19th century America and on to the far-reaches of the globe, at the same time that they took an enduring hold in those most intimate of places: the home and the heart.