She was a middle aged woman, probably a few years older than my own mom. She said she had a grandson about AJ's age. She and her group of family or friends were just a few feet ahead of us taking in the Christmas light display when AJ decided to sing his own version of "Twinkle Twinkle" at the top of his lungs. The lights were actually supposed to be snowflakes, but I can see where he was going with that. We heard other groups around us laughing as I suggested maybe "Jingle Bells" would be more festive.
"You sure are a chatty little guy," she said. And I felt my eyes well up with tears.
"He sure is. And believe it or not he wasn't saying much of anything this time last year."
She told me boys tend to be like that, and I just nodded, because really what else is there to say? How do I make a stranger understand what the past year has been like for us? How hard we fought for those signs in the beginning. How the words finally came in single syllable approximations and we would celebrate every one even if you had no idea whether he was trying to say ball or bike or baby or banana or bye. "Buh!" was a sound worth celebrating. She doesn't know that I wrote down on my calendar the day he said "I love lu Mama" for the first time, because for a while I wasn't sure those words would ever come.
She called him chatty. There's still a few weeks left, but that might be my favorite Christmas memory of 2012.
4 comments:
this just brought tears to my eyes. SO wonderful.
xoxoxo.
LOVE this. :)
And him.
And mostly you.
This is perfect. AJ (and you guys!) worked so hard to be there. What a sweet sweet moment.
This is awesome!! You worked so hard for this moment!!
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