in other news:

My kid is TALKING now.

As someone whose first love remains words -- some people retain a soft spot for their high school sweetheart; my husband knows that suspicious absences or vague "mm-hmms" on my part mean I'm either furtivereading or furtivewriting, face covered like a two-year-old convinced that, by not seeing those around me, I have effectively hidden myself from them -- this is a weird thrill.

The new object of my ultimate concern now greats me with a mouthful of my previous object of ultimate concern, and it's a little like what I must imagine your average hipster would feel should -- I don't know, Natalie Portman? -- show up with a case of craft beer, eager to hear your thoughts on how V for Vendetta translated to screen. (Believe me, as someone who has unthinkingly brought up the subject of comic books on dates, I can assure you that those scenarios hold an equal potential for adult content).

A few amazing things about my son, talking:

1. He now sings along to the SuperWhy! TV show, which, I have to say, is a show I would cheerfully watch on my own, possibly with a bottle or two of wine, on a night in. I do not prefer the gender politics of SuperWhy!, but if I am honest, I think I might just be being curmudgeonly. As far as I can see, the princess-gown-clad female characters do not allow their impractical adventure attire to keep them from the show's agenda of using literacy skills to get them out of various scrapes. It's like Macgyver, but with rhymes instead of screwdrivers.

Also, if you're into this sort of thing, half the ensemble cast manages to fix said problems while clad in ball gowns and tiaras. (Mac and I have about the same interest in that detail, but on behalf of budding femmes everywhere, SuperWhy the eff not?)

2. He does not differentiate between "me" and "you", which makes for some unintentionally sophisticated meditations on the nature of self versus other. "Hold you, mommy!" for example, is strangely heart-melting in its ability to sound like an offer of comfort when, in point of fact, like every other thing my son says, it can only ever be an imperative.

3. Repetition: a literary technique I'd written off as sophomoric, used to stunning effect by toddlers everywhere. You know how a somewhat sloppy aside becomes increasingly hilarious upon reiteration? If you experienced either pop culture in the late eighties/early nineties, or attended third grade in any cultural moment ever, you must. This phenomenon is last best hope in Mac's verbal arsenal, and it inevitably comes out when he finds that a vocabulary of 150 words fails:

Hold you, mommy!

In a minute, Mac, Mommy is straining boiling water/handling cat feces/carrying heavy items across Atlantic Avenue.

Hold you, Mommy!

Mac, Mommy will hold you as soon as it is safe. 

HOLD YOU, Mommy!

Mac, in like five seconds I can hold you, and also not get hit by a car --

HOLD YOU MOMMY HOLD YOU! 

OKAY, see,  I guess we can just leave these groceries on the sidewalk for the less fortunate NOW I can hold you.

(Indistinct sounds of abandonment, then): 

More milky, mommy!

Clearly, the rest of us have forgotten how to best exploit language in its purest form. I can't simply repeat the same words louder and louder and expect any response short of expulsion from whatever public place I'm occupying.

Something about these words coming out of a three-foot-tall redhead, however, renders them strangely compelling -- like how you initially thought "We run things, things don't run we" MADE NO SENSE and now you must fill your head with sounds at all times to keep it from burrowing back into your subconscious.

I once spent my time arguing over the nuances of enjambment in Walt Whitman's writing. I have read, and reread, Ulysses, allowing that book to absorb hours of my life that could have been spent doing anything. People have paid me for my thoughts on how nineteenth century American authors used language to construct both national identity and a culturally specific understanding of self.

However, I am now unshakable in my conviction that language evolved, not for the personal use of James Joyce or Faulkner or Shakespeare, but so I can hear my son tell me, Mommy NO BRUSH teeth! Mac brush teeth, see teachers! 

This is why I learned English, myself. This is why I have ears.

And if, sixty years from now, these are the only words I can remember from my entire life, just prop me up, turn me Q2hrs, and leave me to it. (If my experiences of long term care are at all representative, I have every confidence you will.)