Could you imagine a life without the ability to speak? To live in a house with people who love you, with a mom that caters to your every desire, with a father who loves to love you and two brothers who giggle with and because of you? I am only 14 months old. My head size is in the 98th percentile. Dad thinks that means my hat size is going to be hard to find and mom wonders which hairstyle will best suit my large skull, but neither of them seem to realize that I am already smarter than both of them.
All the mechanics of daily life are starting to come faster, day by day, if I could only just get these limbs and digits to do what I know they can do, and don’t get me started on the whole gross and fine motor skills of the mouth, tongue and larynx necessary to talk!
So in between my daily exercises and the painstaking wait for my motor skills to develop, I am all eyes. God granted me a set of saucers a mile wide and 30 minutes deep to gaze out at the world through: blue like deep water. I take it all in. It isn’t the big movements, the obvious, “oh look at the widdle baby,” smile that I get from someone that I take in. It is the moment just before they smile or the length that they hold my gaze without a reciprocal smile that teaches me about my race. I will be smart soon. I am intelligent now.
Smart comes from books. Nobody but mom realizes it, and nobody believes her, but I can already read. So, smart will be easy.
Intelligence is connecting the dots. Finding meaning where none is implied. The twinge of her lip and the dart of the eye to see if my mommy is looking before the mail carrier squats and pinches my cheek tells me that half of the show is for me and half is for the carrier herself who misses the days when she had a young daughter of her own. She wants to fall into the fantasy of her past, but steals a look at mommy and twinges as she realizes that to submerge in the dream is taking it too far.
For all the obvious learnings that I must undergo, it is my fascination of the social norms that drive my interest. I have no language, yet I have learned to get what I want.
My mother is an angel. She is the best part of me. Cognitively I know we are physically separated, but I know something that my grown-ups have long since forgotten: we are connected. I can see that this connection, this original form of communication becomes buried under years of social norms training, but today, before I have been contaminated by social constructs, I understand my mother better than she understands herself.
Her heart beats at a different rate and her body temperature drops when she feels that she is not giving enough of herself. She warms when I am comforted and she stiffens when I near danger. Within 15 feet of her, I can feel when I am about to bump my head or if I am nearing an edge, I can sense when food is too hot without using my own touch, just by the wind that pours off of the hairs on the back of her neck as they rise. We are connected in a way that the moon affects the weather but that it can not be explained.
Each day, between inventing routines, and carrying out protocols that are practice for life in this world, I take a break. I know a place in the wall so thin it can be seen through. Somewhere between my first and second nap, the sun floods in through the glass and warms the sofa. It is my special place: Not far from my books for reference; Close to the place where mommy and I share food; From this place my eyes explore the outside. The subtle interactions of heaven and earth can be seen from this place. The striped bees fly patterns that I am sure are unnoticed by the grown-ups. Every now and then, I can see that Johnny, my 6 year old brother, still sees the patterns, but already his vision for such things is fading. The way the flowers talk to the wind and the keystone chase scenes between the birds and the leaves of the trees, weave a cinema that far exceeds the dim two dimensions broadcast on the TV.
I know I will lose this seat at the window some day. I recognize that my vantage will change and the subtleties will all someday disappear only to be replaced with the quantified confines of language. Until then, I will watch in amazement and cherish the connectedness.
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