I often work with children and it makes me kind of sad when I’m at work and I start talking to a small child and their parent says something like, “oh, she’s sixteen months, she can’t understand you.”
Like, 1. I know what a toddler is and 2. not with that attitude she won’t.
There are a lot of great additions to this post, but I think this also may be the time for me to share one of my favorite stories about myself.
Growing up, I spent most days with my grandmother while my parents were at work. My grandmother was a spry old Estonian woman from Saaremaa who had herself grown up on a farm, but her favorite hobbies in her retirement were reading, being a card shark, and gardening. She had a lovely backyard with a lot of flowers: both those native to Maryland and some that reminded her of her homeland. She spent a lot of time out in the garden, and my very earliest memories are of sitting in the grass watching her putter around in the dirt on her hands and knees.
So one weekend afternoon when I’m perhaps barely a year old, I’m at my parents’ house on their day off, just sort of noodling around on the grass behind our townhouse. My mom thinks she hears me babbling to myself and so she quietly sneaks up behind me, hoping to maybe catch some of my first words.
As she gets closer, she notices that I’m pulling up grass in my fat little baby hands while I mutter something. Just fistful after fistful of grass and tossing it in every direction. She gets up right behind me and finally she can make out what it is I’m saying as I rip up the lawn:
“God damn weeds. God damn weeds! God damn weeds.”