One Man Band
A blooming pink night light holds darkness at bay, crickets rubbing a convincing lullaby from the sound machine. Everyone is asleep, but he is writing a poem about Great Things: Rain. Puppy. Pond. Treats. Black ball-point letters appear, his 4-year old fingers forming whole words before they have been tested by his tongue, teeth and lips. Maps and sketches fill the margins. He tells a story in one of the only ways he knows how.
At 30 months, my son, James, was assessed as having speech apraxia – in the areas of comprehension, he tested above average. But when trying to express the words flitting around his head like caged birds, his brain had trouble telling his mouth to open and let them fly out. We welcomed a speech therapist into our home, used sign language and games to supplement and augment his need to communicate, easing his daily frustrations. He knew exactly what he wanted – we simply didn’t have all the keys to his secret language, no matter that we were his translators out in the world. Our job was to be patient with the process, be playful and trusting.
James blended his own sound-words with a musicality and rhythm he was born with, was a one-man-band to experience. Every conversation became a game of Charades. Every new word was whispered once in our ears, then out loud with gusto. When he began putting two and three words together, wonders began spilling forth – “high water tool” was bridge, “man pants” were overalls, “treat man treat” was coveted ice cream. His words were vivid composites, like Chinese characters, requiring you to see from his perspective, and enter his awareness of how a thing works, its true purpose revealed. We fed him language, bowls of song, stories, poems and rhymes. He gifted us ideas sifted to their molecular level.
The week before James was born, I sent off my first poetry chapbook to a contest. Done with laboring over each poem, I was ready to let the collection live its life in the world, with all its incompleteness and imperfections – the poems would have to speak for themselves without a coach or interpreter. I spent the next 2 & ½ years mothering two children, not getting much writing done. But by witnessing the daily birth of undiluted language, I became a devotee again of the Word – of free verse, toddler slam and lullabies, of every rhyming pair under the sun. Affected by the joy of sound slipping between lips, of words hitting air like steam, we lived within their cloudy habitats. Losing the urge to form, direct or capture words, I simply let them play in my life, like my children, like the birds at the feeder.
James leans into the page, the pen now shaping a tree-house, smoke curling from the chimney. His tongue concentrates. I have no doubt that he will one day be able to express everything igniting in his mopsy head. What the next word will be that bursts from his brain’s snags is the night’s next surprise. Like a bird finding a safe portal, it will slip quietly and surely, be the exact one in mind.
– now appearing in Sage Cohen’s Writing the Life Poetic Zine’s April issue.
