Mother tongue

Now was the moment when our son’s eyelids were supposed to flutter gently closed, his breath sighing into a slower rhythm. Like clockwork; like magic. You remember how easy it was, don’t you?

All those nights you were at his side instead of me? Not like you and I are alive.” “Not like Mommy was alive?” The way he said the word Mommy: Like a word he’d already started to unlearn. A lump caught in my throat.

Not like Mommy.” “But words do die,” he insisted. One of the preschool teachers must have had the news on in the background. I couldn’t blame them, given the circumstances.

I wondered how much Theo had absorbed—whether he understood the blade’s edge of survival that humanity stood on, teetering. The words might still exist, but they’re only written down somewhere, on paper or wood or stone.” He considered this thoroughly, in silence. At last he said, “I think when words die, someone brings them to a cave and puts them in a big pile.

The cave is really dark and there’s a monster who lives inside. And the monster eats the dead words, and he makes the words part of his body, and he gets bigger and bigger and bigger.” “Uh,” I said. Following the lead of his imagination was always your parenting wheelhouse.

He tucked himself tighter against me and whispered, “When the monster comes out of the cave, he’s going to eat you, too.” A chill tiptoed up my spine. Remember that, when the time for judgment comes. His words were becoming small.