My daughter takes her time. She is cautious with her steps, deliberate with her words. Despite some pathologies thrown around ("gross motor delay" for the walking hesitance, "speech delay" for her silence), I've always felt she was, more than anything, her own perfect person. Maybe other parents of more than one child have had the experience of raising children who seemed similar, who achieved milestones at a similar pace, or had familiar personalities, but my experience has been the opposite. Johanna is beautifully, wonderfully herself, and that has forced me to be patient, which, if I am honest, is the fruit of the spirit that I am least likely to cultivate. Unless it's for her.
Over the last several months we've been going to speech therapy once a week. Sometimes it's me, sometimes it's her dad, but it's a weekly reminder that, so far, she has been quieter than her brother. There are all sorts of reasons why that might be. Perhaps her incessant ear infections have made her hearing a bit muffled at times. Perhaps the noisy nature of her big brother has left her with the impression that he'll do the talking for both of them. Or maybe she is just waiting.
Like my first born (and I am also a first born), words come easily for me. They always have. But more than that, I've also frequently used words as a crutch. I've been witty when I should have been careful. I've been aggressive when I should have been kind. I've used my ease with words to get what I want, when I want it, and I've hurt people with my words, too. So as I've gotten older, and especially as I've had children, I've tried to be more deliberate with my speech, more exacting, and I've tried to listen with the same passion with which I speak.
Many of the speech therapy tools are about waiting, giving Jo room to use her voice, applauding her for each new sound. She understands far beyond what she can tell us, that much is obvious. And we wait for that understanding to take shape, burst forth, tumble out behind a laugh. And in the meantime, we do all the things you do with small children. We run and chase and pretend and play in the sandbox. And we draw.
Jo loves to draw and over the last few days she has said, "Mama" and pointed to the chair next to her while she colors. She gives me a marker and says, "heart," and I dutifully draw a heart. My habit is to draw a midsize heart and we talk about the color (purple tonight). After that, she says, "big heart," and I flip the page over and draw a heart that barely fits within the space. She grins broadly and then points beside the heart and says, "baby." I draw a small heart beside the big one and she singsongs, "big heart baby heart" and we both laugh. Sometimes she points at the big heart and says, "Mama" and I point to the baby heart and say, "Jojo." And sometimes she just scribbles away and mutters "bigheartbabyheart" as I chase marker tops on the floor.
She is pure joy, beloved and my last baby. So waiting for her to speak also feels like I'm asking her to grow up, which I'm loathe to do. But I'm also anxious to understand her chatter, to hear the stories she tells her dolls, the fibs she tells her brother. All the speech milestones are pretty logical, stringing words together, forming short sentences. We've had a few ("mine now" is important in our house). But my favorite thus far, by far, is Big heart, baby heart. It's a gloriously full, complex, poetic genius of a sentence. And it's hers.
