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Word Love

Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Monday, November 17, 2008 9:28 PM

Language is an incredible thing.

I’ve thought so for as long as I can remember.  I think my devotion to A Child’s Garden of Verses and the poetry of A.A. Milne began almost at birth.  My mother tells a story of a barely two-year-old me describing my sister as she learned to crawl: “She’s eating the meadow flowers!”

When I first discovered Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” some years later, I had to memorize it immediately.  I didn’t care that half the words made no sense at all; the tones and cadence were intoxicating to me.  A decade after that, I took an excellent poetry criticism class in college and each session left me nearly drunk; I couldn’t believe the embarrassment of poetic riches that could fit into a single Norton Anthology.

Even more than I love the music of language, I love the meaning it can convey.  I’ve been reading Chesterton’s Orthodoxy for half a decade because his phrasing is so succinct that I must take time to marvel at the construction of each perfect sentence as well as at the incisiveness of the thought contained therein.  It takes ages to get through a page, and eventually I become exhausted and have to put the book down for a while.

As much as I enjoy reading and hearing language and always will, by far the most exhilarating language-related experience I’ve had has been watching and helping my daughter acquire it.

From her first babbled syllables I’ve loved every stage of Camilla’s verbal development, so much so that even as I appreciate her advances, I am wistful for what we’ve left behind.  I spent months trying to get her to pronounce her nickname properly, but I was secretly sad when I recently realized that she always says “Billa” now, and I haven’t heard “Bih-ba” in weeks.  And I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m glad “waterlemon” has survived the summer; I’m sure she’ll learn to say “watermelon” properly next year, and for now I want to keep enjoying the cuteness of the misnomer.

I love Camilla’s language because it gives me the key to understanding the workings of her little mind.  That mind is a constant source of wonder to me, and - I consider this a special gift God gives to parents - a source of amusement as well. 

This afternoon she and I were having a discussion about things only grown-ups are allowed to touch (knives, raw sausage) which segued into a conversation about who is a grown-up and who is not.  She correctly identified Mama, Daddy, and several aunts and uncles as grown-ups, and Daniel and she herself as not-grown-ups (this presented the opportunity to learn a new word, which as of bedtime she is still pronouncing “todd-ers”).

Then I asked her if Grandpa is a grown-up, and she said no.

This is the sort of joke that Grandpa himself would appreciate, and I would have liked to give Camilla credit for being subtle enough to attempt irony, but I suspected she was simply confused.

“If Grandpa isn’t a grown-up, what is he?”

“He’s a grandpa!”

See there?  I’d been so proud, thinking she had the categories nailed, but now we were back to square one.

Good thing the whole process is so much fun!

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