To Name Is To Claim
I’ve never felt as full up with wonder as when I was watching my toddlers learn how to name everything in front of them.
I can still feel my daughter’s squirmy body shifting around on my lap as she tap-tap-tapped on the puffy green cloud perched on top of a popsicle stick in her ABC book and exclaimed, “Tree!”
“That’s right!” I said, for the millionth time. (I don’t have as much occasion to say these words these days, now that they are teenagers…).
“Yumi, look — that’s a tree too! Look, TREE,” I said, pointing to the serene Japanese maple outside our window with its tidy shelves of delicate red leaves.
Yumi looked at her book, then out the window, then back at my face. Then she burst out laughing. Wasn’t that silly. In my mind’s eye, she looks as incredulous as it is possible for a toddler to look, especially one with her hair tied up in sprouts on the top of her head.
YES. It was the best joke in the world. No laugh track, just tailor made for an audience of two. Our audience of two.
Then I felt serious. “Don’t trust me,” I either said or wanted to say. “Believe in the differences you see. Hold onto your own view, no matter what.”
