The Grammar of Love

It's a fascinating thing to contemplate how people learn language. Just from hearing speech, baby brains not only learn words and pronunciation; they also derive the rules of grammar. No one explains to a three-year-old that "I go" but "he goes" because of the difference between first- and third-person subjects. We just talk, and the brain figures out how to conjugate verbs. Incredible.

According to my linguist friend, as young brains develop, they learn words before rules, simple rules before more complex ones. This is why a child will start out by using all verbs in the present tense: "Yesterday, I go to the store." Then she will learn the word "went" and start saying "Yesterday, I went to the store." They her brain will figure out the rule that verbs in the past tense end with -ed, so she will switch to saying, "Yesterday I goed to the store." Although this seems like losing ground, since she moves from the correct usage to an incorrect one, it is actually an advancement, since it shows she has learned a new grammar rule. Finally, she will learn that "go" is an irregular verb, that its past tense is "went," and she will switch back, permanently, to "Yesterday, I went to the store."

I find it simply amazing that all the complexities of English grammar are reverse-engineered like this by every child who starts learning the language. That our brains are such flexible and clever structures that they can figure out the rules that everyone else is following without ever being told what those rules are.

This is in part by way of introducing the idiosyncrasy that has crept into Daughter's speech of late. It's a new word that she has invented: wellly. I think it has to be spelled with three ls because this is her way of trying to form an adverb. She already knew the word "well." She used to use it properly: "Mama, I can't draw this very well." But then she figured out that adverbs end in -ly (not that she knows the word adverb or could identify one in a sentence). And so instead of switching to "Mama, I can't draw this very goodly," she decided that the word "well" could only be use properly if it ended in -ly also. Hence: well-ly. (She pronounces it with two very distinct syllables.) "Mama, I can't draw this car very wellly. Can you please help?"

Like her fondness for the color lellow, or her brother's pronunciation of words that start with "th" as though they start with "d" (Mama! watch dis!), this little tic of speech is completely endearing. I love the baby imperfection mixed with the preschooler sentiment. My ear lingers fondly over those linguistic moments that signal both their development and the long way they have to go.

Son, when he was about four, gave up "dis" and "dat" and switched, with a precision that bespoke real determination on his part, to "this" and "that." I felt a little tug at my heart when the baby speech disappeared.

I have been lovingly registering every utterance of "wellly" for the same reason, I think. It is perfect in its imperfection. A perfect register, in just six letters, of what it means for Daughter to be four.

And then, this past week, Son suddenly made the leap into the subjunctive. He no longer says, "I wish I was faster." He now says, "I wish I were faster." The were is correct. That tiny piece of correct grammar, though, deals me a shock every time I hear it.

In that were, I hear him growing up. I realize with a start how far he is beyond baby grammar and preschool pronunciation.

I find myself hoping Daughter keeps saying wellly for a while, if only to balance out the whizzing forward that I feel when her big brother opens his mouth to speak.

I don't want them to be babies forever, of course. But a tiny piece of me can't help noticing that although everyone says that the time moves so fast, and you hardly blink and they're bigger, in fact, I do see it happening. It's as if, right before my eyes, they step up one more notch. There is a pride and wonder in their own voices as they master those linguistic milestones.

And so, I want to register it. I don't want to blink and suddenly find them older. I want to savor and adore the growing up, even as I long for the baby that is left behind. I want to embrace and love these moments, so that I do not find myself, one day, feeling as though I missed it all.

Today, I want to be sure that I listen. And that I hear them very, very wellly.

Of Fashion Delusions

Maybe it's my late-summer addiction to Project Runway, or maybe it's the free subscription I got to Marie Claire courtesy of expiring airline miles, or maybe it's a mild version of mid-life crisis.  But whatever it is, I find myself suddenly longing to purchase Fashionable Items that can only be described as wildly inappropriate for my lifestyle, my body, my job, and my geographic region...not to mention my wallet. (See? I nearly wrote "my pocketbook" there -- and, seriously, who under the age of 65 carries a "pocketbook" anymore?)

Even more worrisome, I not only want to purchase them. I want to wear them.

I remember when I was a young teenager, pouring over the pages of Seventeen magazine, and thinking how mortified the girl in the "Don't" pictures must be -- you know, the one with the little black rectangle covering her eyes for purposes of protecting her identity, who had been photographed wearing some nightmare of an outfit that was physically unflattering in the extreme or contained a horrifying mix of colors, patterns, fabrics, styles.

And now, I am afraid I might become her.

Case in point: I nearly went out to the school bus stop this morning in my yoga pants. They are very cute pants in charcoal grey, with that perfectly cut flare at the ankle and a scrolly design in ivory adorning the lower portion of one leg. They are sporty and casual and oh-so-comfortable. In my deluded state of Fashionableness, however, I nearly made the fatal error of imagining that just because I had purchased pants that look great on toned, 20-something models, I had suddenly morphed into a mother with a toned, 20-something rear view.

Sadly, I have not.

Fortunately, the hallway mirror reminded me of that fact before I walked out the door, and I quickly pulled on jeans, thereby thankfully avoiding parading all my yoga jiggle in front of the neighborhood moms.

It is a simple truth that precious few 40-year-old women should wear yoga pants for any reason whatsoever that does not involve driving to, participating in, or driving home from a yoga class. And I am not one of those few.

Yet through all my immersion in the leggings-and-layers looks that are everywhere right now, I have apparently become so completely deluded that I think I can wear these things.

I similarly find myself wanting a cozy, thickly furry vest, despite the fact that I am neither

a snow bunny,

a beguilingly angled fashion model,

a super-spy prepared to retrieve stolen state secrets from an undisclosed arctic location while totally kicking bad-guy ass,

nor gamine-thin and adorable.

I'm not sure where I think I would wear my new faux fur wonder, but I'm afraid I might want to sport it all the time--at PTA meetings and soccer games, over my favorite work dress, out for drinks with my Bus Stop Friends.

Half of me thinks these are all the right answer.

The other half of me can't believe that I actually think anyone in Michigan ought to believe the Fashion Hype that says "you, too, can pull off this look in your daily life."

Ever since leg warmers and slouchy belts were all the rage (the FIRST time), I have been entranced by fashion. Entranced, of course, does not necessarily translate to the ability to pull off these looks. (Though, if I do say so myself, I rocked the multiple pairs of socks in different colors and rolled up, baggy, pegged pants look in 1985.)

And now, suddenly, I am faced with the irrefutable fact that I am no longer in the age range of the models running around in these clothes in the pictures. I'm not old, exactly. Not a fuddy-duddy, I hope. But I'm still a bit unmoored.

It is a major milestone to note that I have passed the stage of being restricted to a wardrobe of things on which I don't care if I get spit-up.  But I don't have the will to dry-clean, and I still have to show up to the playground prepared to hoist small folk up to the monkey-bars and help them make it across--small, dusty shoes kicking at me all the way.

I'm bored of t-shirts, not toned enough for leggings unless they are covered by a dress, and somewhat self-conscious of the fact that nothing looks more ridiculous than a woman who refuses to dress her age in some misguided sense that if she dresses younger she will somehow appear younger.

On the other hand, I'm not quite this either.

There has to be some magic bullet. Something that is both appropriate and more flattering that the slouchy, comfy corduroys and turtlenecks that are my winter uniform.

But until I figure out what that is, I will daydream about furry vests...black leggings...layers of sparkly silver jewelry.

And the hips I had back in 1985.

The Best Laid Plans...

You know those little moments when you think you've thought of everything? And then the "thing" invariably backfires -- spectacularly or hilariously or embarrassingly -- because you were not thinking like a child? We've had a few of those moments recently.

We made a chore chart containing daily tasks plus a few more substantial weekend chores. We also added a "Good Behavior Goal" to the daily list. (This goal changes, depending on what each child needs to work on.) At the end of every day, at tuck-in time, we talk about their behavior for the day and how well they've met the goal.

Chores are simply part of being in a family, so failure to complete them will result in losing privileges rather than some portion of their small weekly allowance. But a child who is successful five days out of seven at his/her individual behavior goal gets an allowance bump.*

Apparently, we did not do quite enough to explain to our younger child how the system would work.  Daughter (age 4) sidled up to me last night and tucked her hand in mine. "Mama," she said, looking hopefully up at me, "Mama, I brushed my teeth. [pause] Can I have that dollar now?"

* * * * *

At the first soccer game of the season, Son's team faced a lot of newness.  Last year, teams in his age group played 3 on 3 with no goalie on a mini-field. This year, the field is twice that size, teams are 5 on 5, and there are goalies.  At practices, there have been drills on handling the ball, practice aiming kicks, some discussion of defense versus offense. At the first game, there was a flurry of explaining about who should be where on the field.

No one thought to explain the referee.

In the first moment where play needed to be halted, the ref blew the whistle. The kids? Kept right on running as if they hadn't heard. The whistle tweeted out again, longer this time. Not a kid slowed his pace. TWEE TWEEE TWEEEEEEEE TWEEEEEEEEEEEE went the whistle.

Finally, the coaches realized that no one had ever said to these six-year-olds, "when the referee blows his whistle, you have to stop and listen." As the referee began maniacally blowing on his whistle, the coaches called out kids' names and managed to make the boys understand that they should stop running. The parents, on the other hand? Couldn't stop laughing very quickly at all.

Then, a few minutes later, it became clear that a few other "obvious" basics were missing from the kids' conception of soccer. Such as: when you've been assigned a starting position on the field, you are actually allowed to move from that position as the ball moves. You don't have to stay rooted and wait for the ball to roll within five feet of you.

And that if you are goalie, you are allowed to use your hands and not just your feet.

And that even if you are playing with teams of kids who don't all know that they are allowed to run around rather than remain glued to their places on the field, invariably someone will eventually score.

And that when someone scores, you will need the referee to blow the whistle for a pause in play so that the coach can console the sobbing goalie whose small, inexperienced feet were not enough to stop that  speeding ball from landing in that giant goal net.

Hence the email we parents all received today, explaining that the coach will be spending some sustained time at practice tomorrow teaching the kids what is involved in playing goalie and talking with them about what to expect and how to respond when the other team scores. I don't know why, but I actually love that the kids not only need goal-tending skills work but also some pointers on how not to burst into tears.  There was something so heart-warming about how the coach handled things at yesterday's game, about his recognition that he needed to provide more instruction about something he'd taken for granted, about his interest in helping them become better players and better sports.

These moments -- the ones where we think we've taught them so much, where we realize that we still have both so much to teach and so much to learn -- these are some of the most powerful parenting moments that exist. We learn from our children (the coach wrote in his email, "as I learned from N-- yesterday..."), just as they learn from us.

It is humbling and marvelous, hilarious and powerful, all in the same moment.


* While I have had some conflicted feelings about "paying for good behavior," the daily review system that we instituted in mid-summer has been working wonderfully. We managed to cut down dramatically on the whining from the six year old in a very short time, simply by being diligent about the nightly conversation about how well he'd done, and dropping a small coin into his piggy bank on nights when he'd fully succeeded at meeting the goal that day. The positive reinforcement was like magic, and the honest conversations (he knew exactly when he hadn't been so successful) felt really productive as we discussed what he could do better.  We are already moving on to his third goal since we started this system.