There are things we say at our house - the first part of a phrase or line from a storybook, an inside joke or a jingle or a quote from a movie - that everyone else knows how to finish, a secret language that feels like a hug or a high five all at once.
Beyond O-H, there's Sheep in a jeep on a hill that’s steep... and Muffin cup, muffin cup... or Why is the carpet all wet, Todd?
These are just a few things on a long list I hope the boys can recite for years and years, words that may feel like coming home.
Right now there's a tremendous amount of very age appropriate vocabulary slash slang thrown around - a level very much like the Wicked movie merch, justtt short of obnoxious.
Gotta study for this test, chat. Don't be such dog water, bruh. Stop talking and lemme cook, I'm tryna lock it in. Like, Nelson Mandela was high-key salty about his country's policies so he went full savage to change them. I'm bouta eat, hundo P, no cap.
There's another thing I've noticed too, about words in our house.
When worries are named out loud in the kitchen or at the dining table or burrito-ed into bed, their half-life seems to be halved again. It's a safe place to speak, and the sounding board of a brother or a stuffed bear or the butcher block, the labeling of the emotion, both things can serve to reduce the intensity.
These are just small practices that create a little breathing space in the avalanche, tender ways to connect that weave a stronger net -- not sure that words will save us but they've helped hold us so far.
*as Ames describes them in Gilead
