Last month we hosted Naya, our (almost) two-year-old granddaughter, for her first sleepover at our house.
The next morning my wife asked if she’d like pancakes for breakfast. “Yeeaahhh” she replied. Then immediately, “Dip it! Dip it!” Her parents usually gave her a little syrup on her plate so she could dip small pieces of pancake in it. She went off to play. When told a few minutes later that the pancakes were ready, she came running back into our kitchen, eyes sparkling with a big smile, shouting “Happy! Happy!”
It was such a sweet moment. One word captured her inner state and did so exuberantly.
Human language is a miracle we take for granted. Fragile words convey complex feelings, thoughts and emotions. Through language, what’s “inside” us suddenly becomes “outside.”
Last weekend Naya was back with us, this time for the whole weekend. Saturday morning featured pancakes again and after breakfast we asked if she’d like to write with chalk on the sidewalk. Her one-word response: “Fun!”
Watching a two-year-old learning to talk reminds me of the film The Miracle Worker. Blind, deaf and mute, Helen Keller painfully learns from Anne Sullivan how words correspond with the things around her. The climactic scene is when Helen ecstatically realizes for the first time that the word “water” signed into her teacher’s hand means the wet stuff she is splashing.
Suddenly, the world opens up to her. Helen races around the room, signing words as fast as she can for everything she touches. Every time Anne confirms “Yes,” Helen has fresh energy to keep making connections with reality that, until then, had eluded her. The fog of her existence was clearing.
There is something deeply moving about the scene. Connecting words with material objects or feelings sets Helen free.
I’ve long forgotten my own 2-year-old sense of delight in pointing at something and saying its name, or my satisfaction when someone confirmed, “Yes, that’s a helicopter.”
And yet, I have echoes of that delight every time I read really good writing. Not the thriller you bought for the beach this August, but Annie Dillard, Mark Twain, Eugene Peterson or ???? (you fill in the blank).
We are fortunate indeed when words still move us, still capture something interior and move it exterior so we can share the speaker’s experience. We are fortunate when someone puts words together in ways that give life and breath—make a feeling, an idea, truly come alive to us.
Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between the lightning and a lightning bug.”
That sentence is what I’m talking about, on two levels. It communicates what I believe about the power of words, and it uses words in the way I’m talking about in order to do it.
Words have more than utilitarian value. When Naya says “Happy!” or “Fun!” I not only better understand her inner state. I draw emotionally closer to her. She is experiencing the Hellen Keller-like joy of penetrating deeper into her reality, one word at a time. I smile and want to share her adventure.
By God’s grace, freshly turned out words will keep my 66-year-old experience of reality growing as well. Excellent writers will be my companions on the journey.
Great blog…so true. I am bouncing it to many others. John
What a wonderful reflection. Apt words do things for us and to us. Thank you for the inspiration.