19 Months – Baby! Boy!

It’s been so long and so much has changed.  Our little baby is all grown up.  Well, maybe not all grown-up.  Between bottles and diaper changes, Cruv walks and talks.  He precisely engages with the world around him, a striking balance of heady caution and headlong momentum.  He eases down stairs, practices difficult passages, gauges food for heat, yet swerves his tricycle toward every descent,   swiftly dismounts from our bed, waves to strangers, and chows new foods with a gourmand’s delight.  There are glimpses–when he dons a hat and jacket by himself, enters a room with a mien of supreme confidence–of a long-gone baby and a mature boy.  These moments thrill, yet we cannot help but to hold tight and wish, if only for a moment, that he will never really, really grow-up.  He will always need us to grab him from his crib, dress him, lift him into his high chair.  For now, every day as he rises, every evening as he lies down, we assure him that we are here and he assures us we are here for a purpose.

“Melon Cracked”
Though this is one Cruv’s declaratives (after he dropped a five-pound watermelon), here we refer to his big melon.  In a charming Monterey bed and breakfast, at the end of a lovely day, Cruv tripped forehead first into an unforgiving bed frame.  Dr Miriam assessed the bleeding, while Wife Miriam waited to call Yaron to return until she cleaned the blood from Cruv’s face.  By the time we reached the emergency room, Cruv recovered–As we anxiously waited, he excitedly explored the new space.  A bad Dermabond job, another forehead dive, and ten weeks later, the mark (dare we call it a scar) keeps us on-guard.

On Language as Such, On the Language of Cruv
For some fifteen months, it seemed as if we could say anything–Cruv did not know what anything meant, what he was asked, or the lexical equivalent of what we showed him.   Yet, over time and in repetition, it all adds-up.  The first words Cruv understood were not words but names, singular instances, unique entities: Abba, Ima, Builder Bob, Panda, Dov, and Ugly.  It is the comprehension side of  Walter Benjamin’s claim, “It is the linguistic being of man to name things.”  For Cruv, he first understood all words to be names.
Soon after, Cruv understood much of what was said–more names (as in his books,  “Goodnight, Gorilla” and “Just Like Daddy”), but also what we do (brush our teeth, eat in his high chair, go the the park, get ice cream),  body parts (head, hair, ears, nose, tongue, teeth, hands, arms, belly, feet), animals (roars like a lion, thumps his chest like a gorilla, stomps his feet like an elephant, etc), clothing (pants, shoes, jacket), the food he eats, the places we go, and more and more.  Quickly, he understood the characteristics that make shoes shoes or a lion a lion.
And with his expanding spoken vocabulary, the complexity of his spoken language development became even clearer.  After A, B, E and Y, he added C(h), H, K, N, 0, P, R, S, T, and V with words like Abba, bye, baby, Ima (Ama, for Cruv), hi, peas, bike, park, shoes, keys, avocado, asparagus, apricot, cheese, cars, carrot, bus, blanket, and more.  His first spoken words–like his early comprehended words–represented much of his world, his daily routine.  His family, coming and going, play, food, waking and sleeping.  As we read in his room, walk in the neighborhood, or ride around town, Cruv declares what he identifies (not only what he sees, but also what he hears):  Moon!  Truck!  Bike!  Burp!  Tree!  Dog!  Park!  Flowers!  Light!  He hears the sounds our over-stimulated brains silence, sees the sights our hard-to-please brains ignore.
From his vocabulary of exceptional commonness, grew a language of increasing sophistication.  Into his visual and audial identifications, he intersperses words without referents–windy, hot, cracked, spicy, thirsty, tight, cozy, and up.  It is magical.  And then, from his declaratives, came sentences–”It dropped,” “Where’s the moon?” and “It’s my blanket.”
To catalog his vocabulary would be a manageable yet significant task.  With every book and outing, his lived and linguistic world expands.  Yet as he announces the world he sees, as learns the building blocks of an infinite language–he identifies B, O, K, P, C, D, G, A, E–he transforms the world into a language-world.  Cruv’s worldly engagement is linguistic, categorized, and, in a certain sense, more and less true.  When every flower and fire truck were unique entities, though he could never know them, he nonetheless saw them and the world as the world is: countless, singular instances.  With every word he acquires, he signifies and generalizes, and allows for a world to be expressed in an alphabet.
Most recently, Cruv combined his older knowledge of proper names and his new feeling for pronouns–”I Cruv.”  In this statement Cruv reveals the gift of language, the truth of the nominal, an intention of his name.  He is–physically, psychically, and nominally–a unique entity, a singular instance with a singular name.

Cruv’s Millionth Flight will be Departing from Gate 11
We continue to maximize on Cruv’s lap-child status (high carbon footprint, no frequent flyer miles).  Here we go:
SFO to SLC, SLC to SFO; SFO to PHX, PHX to SFO; SFO to JFK, JFK to SFO; SFO to JFK, JFK to SFO; OAK to BUR, BUR to OAK; SFO to IAD, BWI to SLC, SLC to PHX, PHX to SFO.
Okay, here’s a little more info:  In Park City, Cruv sledded in the snow with Nathan, David, and Amy.  In New York,  he toured the town as Yaron met with professors.  In Phoenix,  he played with toy frogs and real cousins at Passover.  In New York, he  worked the room and ate caviar at Noam and Julie’s wedding.  In Los Angeles, he danced at Diane’s 60th birthday.  In Rockville, he kissed Bubbie.  Back in Park City, he hiked Sweeney’s Switchbacks and John’s Trail with Oren, Talia, and Aaron.  Back in Phoenix, he ogled his three new Arizona cousins.

As always, we did not have to fly to see all of our emotionally immediate yet geographically distant family.  Some of you (only some of you!) visited.  We are eager for your arrivals, wish-away your departures, and cherish the time in between.  Thank you.

Family Medicine
In June, Miriam completed her intern year of insanely long hours, never-ending weeks, and interminable months.  To the amazement of her colleagues, she also breastfed while in rounds and rebounded from overnight call to rumble and tumble with Cruv.  Yet, for Miriam, it is the reverse:  If not for Cruv, she may not have made it.  When he latched-on, the pressures turned-off.   When he squealed and danced as Miriam neared our doorstep, SF General Hospital receded into the distance.  Miriam and Cruv nourished each other through intern year and infancy.  As Miriam transitioned to a senior and Cruv to a toddler, they decided to nourish each other without the breast–”boobies” to Cruv.

Worth the Price of Admission
From early on, Cruv has been a museum hound.  And from equally early on, visitors have turned-away from the paintings and sculptures, fish and alligators, artifacts and aircrafts, to peek at sleeping Cruv or, more recently, play with charming Cruv.  In the last months, we have visited many museums, but the California Academy of Sciences, the De Young, and, most of all, the SF MoMA more often than the rest.  We go to see exhibits and to see Cruv see exhibits.  He grooved by Warhol’s record covers, chased the projected images of William Kentridge, spotted hats, cars, and trees at Robert Frank’s “Americans,” and races through Barnett Newman’s Zim Zum I.  In and out of great exhibits, being with him at the museum, as this  woman said at the De Young, is “worth the price of admission.”

“More” and It Comes Right Back to You
Though we stopped long ago, other good examples (Kimberly in SF, and Talia and Aaron in NYC) kept-up with the sign language.  Thus, we were bowled-over when, five months ago, Cruv signed “more.”  And he meant it.  He signs for food–from sofritto to peanut butter to ice cream.  Lately, he’s added another gesture to a very specific and emphatic  “more”:  He tilts his head toward Miriam, bats his eyelashes, and signs more.  He cannot get enough–more, more, more–of Miriam’s butterfly kisses (fluttered eyelashes on the cheek, for the uninitiated).
Cruv fills our life with more.  From day one, it was clear Cruv was loved and, even more so, that he could love, with wide-eyes and a patient sigh.  Even though, his loviness, his sweetness, is hard to fathom.  He smiles and waves at sad and sickly strangers, he cuddles with his dolls, hugs his cousins, and reaches for his Savta, Imama, Abu, feeds us as we feed him.  Most recently, he smooches us on the lips.  From day to day, he expresses  love in ways caring, insightful, and unending–He holds his Ima and reassures his Abba.  Even if love comes back to you, it seems to grow exponentially as it absorbed into and is emitted from Cruv.

All Done