Writing Prompt:
Think of a time someone very young or someone very old said something that changed your perspective on an idea you thought you understood.
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The baby found her feet. Rather, she found a new degree of personal autonomy by placing her feet flat on the earth rather than tracing shapes with them in the air. The blocks and books on the second shelf suddenly available without protest, she waddles, belly first, from couch to hearth to bookshelf and back, besting her time from the day before with every lap.
She causally collected a handful of words shortly before her first birthday, but bipedalism triggered a nuclear explosion in her vocabulary. She is genius. She is Virginia Wolfe. She is Shakespeare.
“More puffs please oh no yes thank you thank you… yeeeaaahh”.
Today when I left her she staggered toward me, arms outstretched partly for balance and partly for snuggles, and spoke.
This clumsy surrender to gravity is not unfamiliar. I have seen it in late night bars and early morning goodbyes, whiskey-laced and dizzy. This is not the first falling body I have received into waiting arms.
But in all the ways that matter, this one is different.
A tiny collision. A bright new voice.
“I yub you.”
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