Post by sasha on Mar 10, 2023 12:21:06 GMT -5
My former wife and I were fortunate to have grandmothers more than willing to babysit our young daughter, so that we could both continue to work our respective jobs. A local daycare center provided backup in the event that neither could take her on some particular day. The following snapshot was probably taken when ‘Becca was about 4, and is memorable to me because it marked a milestone in our toddler’s linguistic development. It starts off with me picking up our child at my mother’s house in the little farm town of Westmoreland NH, several miles northwest of the city of Keene where Betty & I both worked……
"G'night, Mom. Thanks again."
"Oh, I love taking care of her – she's such a little angel," Mom replies, silhouetted in the light spilling through the front door. Her breath is coalescing before her in the evening cold as she wiggles her fingers in a little wave to my daughter. Becky is holding my ungloved index finger in one hand and waving back to her Gramma Mary with the other. "Drive carefully, and say 'hi' to Betty for me," Mom says.
"I will," I promise, leading Becky through a gap in the bushes lining the walk and across a small patch of grass to the corner of the split-rail fence surrounding the yard. We clamber over the diagonal brace supporting the end post next to which my car is parked. From several hundred yards away, the bellow of a Holstein in urgent need of milking issues from the cattle barn into a deepening night. Becky gasps. “Hurry, Dad,” she urges. “The cows are getting mooey!”
“Oh, no,” I play along. “Not mooey!” I open the rear passenger door and hoist her up into her car seat. “We’d better get going then,” I say as I settle her in and secure the restraining harness.
A bellow in sympathetic response to the first drifts across the field, through air faintly scented with the tang of manure and silage. She gasps again and kicks her feet in impatient excitement. "Oh, hurry!" she insists, almost as much to herself as to me while she plays out the game in her mind. "They're getting mooier !"
Like when you pretend you *must* reach the far side of the sidewalk before the next car passes behind you, she has apparently placed great importance on getting underway before the evening milking. "Ok, Sweetie," I say by way of appeasement. "Let's go." I hurry around to the driver's side and slide in. Once the door is shut, we are safely sealed off from the increasing mooiness of Chickering’s dairy herd, and I take a moment to admire the thin crescent moon overhead. "Look," I tell her. "Moonie's out tonight."
She cranes her neck forward to see Moonie, the friendly night spirit Betty and I have created to personify the moon. I can see her upturned eyes in Moonie's cool, watery blue light. "It's little," she says. I turn back to regard the narrow sickle of light poised over the frozen cornfield. "Yeah," I agree. I think how Dad always called these 'fingernail moons,' so I tell her, "Looks kind of a like a fingernail."
She says nothing for a second, but continues gazing into Moonie's serene, watchful countenance, and I wonder if the connection between fingernails and celestial bodies might have eluded her. As if in response to my unasked question, she says hesitantly, "Kind of like... banana." She says this haltingly, uncertainly, as if unsure of the validity of the comparison, as if she's only just caught a fleeting glimpse of the concept of analogy, and isn't quite sure she really understands the basic principle.
I'm dumbfounded. "Yes!" I cry, becoming almost irrationally excited. "Yes, yes, EXACTLY like a banana!" and I break into a delighted laugh. I reach through the space between the two front buckets and grab her foot. "Very, very good, Sweetie!" I tell her, and give her foot a little shake. I withdraw my hand and start the engine. "Oh, wow," I murmur, and turn on the headlights before heading out of the driveway and onto the roads that will eventually take us home.
Baby’s first metaphor…..
.
"G'night, Mom. Thanks again."
"Oh, I love taking care of her – she's such a little angel," Mom replies, silhouetted in the light spilling through the front door. Her breath is coalescing before her in the evening cold as she wiggles her fingers in a little wave to my daughter. Becky is holding my ungloved index finger in one hand and waving back to her Gramma Mary with the other. "Drive carefully, and say 'hi' to Betty for me," Mom says.
"I will," I promise, leading Becky through a gap in the bushes lining the walk and across a small patch of grass to the corner of the split-rail fence surrounding the yard. We clamber over the diagonal brace supporting the end post next to which my car is parked. From several hundred yards away, the bellow of a Holstein in urgent need of milking issues from the cattle barn into a deepening night. Becky gasps. “Hurry, Dad,” she urges. “The cows are getting mooey!”
“Oh, no,” I play along. “Not mooey!” I open the rear passenger door and hoist her up into her car seat. “We’d better get going then,” I say as I settle her in and secure the restraining harness.
A bellow in sympathetic response to the first drifts across the field, through air faintly scented with the tang of manure and silage. She gasps again and kicks her feet in impatient excitement. "Oh, hurry!" she insists, almost as much to herself as to me while she plays out the game in her mind. "They're getting mooier !"
Like when you pretend you *must* reach the far side of the sidewalk before the next car passes behind you, she has apparently placed great importance on getting underway before the evening milking. "Ok, Sweetie," I say by way of appeasement. "Let's go." I hurry around to the driver's side and slide in. Once the door is shut, we are safely sealed off from the increasing mooiness of Chickering’s dairy herd, and I take a moment to admire the thin crescent moon overhead. "Look," I tell her. "Moonie's out tonight."
She cranes her neck forward to see Moonie, the friendly night spirit Betty and I have created to personify the moon. I can see her upturned eyes in Moonie's cool, watery blue light. "It's little," she says. I turn back to regard the narrow sickle of light poised over the frozen cornfield. "Yeah," I agree. I think how Dad always called these 'fingernail moons,' so I tell her, "Looks kind of a like a fingernail."
She says nothing for a second, but continues gazing into Moonie's serene, watchful countenance, and I wonder if the connection between fingernails and celestial bodies might have eluded her. As if in response to my unasked question, she says hesitantly, "Kind of like... banana." She says this haltingly, uncertainly, as if unsure of the validity of the comparison, as if she's only just caught a fleeting glimpse of the concept of analogy, and isn't quite sure she really understands the basic principle.
I'm dumbfounded. "Yes!" I cry, becoming almost irrationally excited. "Yes, yes, EXACTLY like a banana!" and I break into a delighted laugh. I reach through the space between the two front buckets and grab her foot. "Very, very good, Sweetie!" I tell her, and give her foot a little shake. I withdraw my hand and start the engine. "Oh, wow," I murmur, and turn on the headlights before heading out of the driveway and onto the roads that will eventually take us home.
Baby’s first metaphor…..
.