Using my words

When either the five- or three-year-old struggles to find a word in their individual vocabulary, my friend, their mother, listens patiently and gently provides encouragement by calmly saying, Use your words. And then my friend waits while little eyes search upward and little minds scan inventory until the word they want to say is recalled. Last night for the five-year-old, it was ambiance. I had taught her the word the night before when, sitting beside me, she was telling me how nice the room was, how much she liked the table setting and the burning candles in the silver candle stick holders. I taught her the word ambiance.

At dinner, she told us how nice the room was, dramatically waved her small hand across the scene and... paused. We did not turn our attention away but waited. She looked at me and I at her. Then, proudly, she announced that it had a very nice ambiance.

It naturally happens that the three-year-old is eager to catch up with her sister's vocabulary. Oftentimes, you can see her face change when she hears a new word from her sister's mouth, you can watch her wanting to try it out for herself. Big sister says a word unfamiliar to her ears and the little one pauses a moment then enthusiastically sighs and says yeah, and follows it with her own echo of the word. In this case it was, Yeah. Pause. And then she rolled it around in her mind, unfamiliar and new, testing its shape in her mouth before letting it go with glee and excitement, Awneeeawnce!

There are stars in the sky that I do not know and cannot name and yet when I sit beneath them on a dark sky night as I did Thursday night, I feel at home. I am both comforted and amazed by them, that they exist and that from my little spot in the world I can see them and feel a sense of wonder and perspective.

Using my words, I want to tell you that my life is changing, because the lives of those I love are changing. There are waves and rolls and ripples, there is softness and gentle connection. There is a texture I cannot name, a feeling simultaneously unfamiliar yet still recognizable.

Right now my friend roasts a chicken for our dinner, her husband watches football downstairs, their girls play in the living room. It's cold outside, and the leaves flirt with change, each day a bit of red, a dash of yellow. There's a fire in the fireplace. Summer has relinquished to Autumn. The season changes, the stars appear, reminders everywhere that life begins, discovers, enriches, broadens, leaves a mark and circles back. There's a calm here, around me, within me, a calm I sought and knew I'd find by coming here. How can I use my words to explain it to you? It is the slow-earned peace of sitting still and allowing change rather than resisting or trying to orchestrate and direct where it will fit, or dodging or denying, or desperately scrambling to find a place to put it. The calm I feel right now, it's like the momentary pause between cool and cold, between green and red. It's like a child speaking a word for the first time.

Or like kissing the nose of a two-week old calf.