To Dark Purple Drinks

By the age of 3, I spoke fluent Spanish. Fluent, that is, in a 3-year old’s brain who sits around listening to her parent’s best friends, the Castillos, speak Spanish to each other. It became a novelty. I don’t remember that phase of toddlerhood, but somewhere packed in a long forgotten 60s era suitcase lies an old reel to reel tape featuring yours truly doing her best Spanish impersonation. The details were in the staccato like babblings, my attempts at stressing certain syllables, and, according to Mrs. Castillo, my hand movements and pronounced head tilt. There were no real words, just a made-up group of sounds I truly thought others should understand. To the Castillos, the whole thing was fabulous. They would howl with laughter and beg me into repeat performances. My father was not so enamored. He saw it as offensive, if not to the Castillos then certainly to someone unfamiliar with my tiny vaudevillian shtick. Soon, I would begin to grasp that laughter did not equal actual communication. My emerging language skills naturally rerouted to my own native tongue. But, isn’t it true that children just say the darndest things? Take my grandkids, for instance.

I just spent ten days in Houston, alone, with a 7-year-old girl, a 4-year-old boy, a dog named Daisy, and Cheeto, the red tabby cat. And let me tell you, they all put me through the paces. We started with that age old game of “fool the grandma,” where you take turns trying to convince your elder in charge that you are totally allowed to watch things on YouTube. Next comes a crash course in the debate concept known as “too smart for my own britches” where you earn points by convincing old granny that ice cream for dinner is a normal occurrence. That note mom left about bedtime being at 7:30 – it was supposed to say 10 pm. Mom just made a mistake. Yet, I have games of my own, the likes of which those kiddos had never seen. They learned the concept of being born at night, but not last night. I taught them all about turnip trucks, including the fact that I had not just fallen off one. Once we got past all these boundary pushing ideologies, we had tremendous fun. Also, it was tremendously loud. See, I had forgotten about the lack of volume control the littles have. It’s been over 30 years since their parents were those ages. Time heals wounds and ruptured eardrums, it turns out. There was wrestling, so much wrestling. There were arguments, so many arguments. There were tears, so many tears. And, in between the yelling and the screaming and the falling and the punching and the tantrums and the tears, there were lots and lots of words. The writer in me relished in their developing language.

Thursday night was absolute heck. It had been a cold and rainy day, so there was no playground time after school. It was a scant 2 days after Valentine’s, and I was still hearing plea upon plea for more candy. The unfairness of the playground restriction coupled with a sugar high was a recipe for disaster. We fought through homework. We fought through dinner. We fought through picking a television show. Finally, they fought themselves into silence with me agreeing to 20 minutes of Snow White before bath time. My daughter-in-law proudly presented me with a bottle of Cabernet before she departed. I thanked her but reminded her that those are empty calories, and I really don’t imbibe during the week. Her response: Oh, you’re going to need this. My granddaughter, properly sedated by a mindless movie, walked by, and stated, matter-of-factly, “Oh, Didi, you almost finished your dark purple drink. Good job!” Other highlights of the week included my discovery of the grandson’s dislike of spicy things. “Pretzels are spicy.” “Suckers are spicy.” Sweethearts are spicy.” “These chicken nuggets are spicy.” Turns out, anything he doesn’t want is spicy. My granddaughter, Chynna Rose, is obsessed with anything related to natural disasters, which is rather terrifying. “Didi, how tall is a tsunami?” “Didi, how long does it take a house to burn down?” “Didi, what’s the biggest earthquake crack?” “Didi, what is hotter, the San Francisco fire or a volcano?” 4-yearold Teddy is big enough to run fast, but not always quick enough to prevent a fall. “Ezra (his given name), slow down.” “My heart is slowing down, but my brain isn’t listening.” I came home with a pulled right calf muscle, an upset stomach from eating all of Teddy’s spicy candy, and a heart full of love. To adults, words are just excess noise. To kids, they’re how you learn life, even if it’s fake Spanish.