A Face Only A Mother Could Love

Kids are cute. There is no question that newborns are hideous and unbearably vulnerable. We all come into this world with the same life-skills, in other words none. We leave this world at different levels of achievement.

Newborns are only beautiful to their parents and close relatives. For the first year of life, when puking, pissing, eating, sleeping and shiting are the primary functions of human life, it is a biological fact that you must look like the person your parents love the most: be that themselves or their partner (depending on the co-dependancy level involved) or in the instance of adoption, guilt plays also plays into the equation.

We have all heard the expression, "He's got a face only a mother could love." This means, that left to his own devices out in the middle of wilderness this butt-ugly child couldn't defend, protect or survive on his own. Humans are very fragile creatures, being mammals, we need to be born into the world before our heads get to big (physically, but also psychologically) and way, way before we actual developed enough brain-power to support of ourselves.

My son, and I am not just saying this, is beautiful. He is photogenic, charming, strong and beautiful. He has a face (and personality) that not only a mother, father, step-cousin, friend-of-a-friend's brother's mother or stranger could love. The problem lies in his speech.

My son, speaks a language "only a mother can understand". I don't mean to be sexist, so I will clarify. Riley speaks a sincere combination of "sign", "English" and "baby-talk" that anyone who spends more than 5-hours-a-week with him could understand in context. That being about 2.3 people, no one understands what the hell he is saying besides his mother, father and an occational other adult now-and-then.

I began writing this entry a few weeks ago and since then Riley's speech has developed considerably. I started to write this entry about the phrases Riley uses and how he has seemed to skip right from infancy to teenagehood.

"'quit bug me" and "i say what mama say" are excellent examples of phrases that make me want to lock my child in his room. His phrases have become more complex and his parroting less severe. But the biggest break-through happened this weekend with the word "yo-yo".

You may or may not remember the yo-yo as a childhood toy that caused you either humiliation or a great sense of achievement. "Yo-yo" is also one of the first words that Riley began saying about 2 years ago, right along with "mama" and "dada".

How I have tried to solve the puzzle of this word, and yet for two years, this word has left me mystified. The problem with "yo-yo" is that Riley uses this words in a multitude of contexts and the contexts surrounding the word are misleading and contradicting. For example, Riley laughs and says, "YO-YO" when he his excited and happy. He also yells, "YO-YO" when you are reprimanding him and he wants you to stop. For a while I thought I had "yo-yo" figured out, when he seemed to be expressing "yo-yo" in place of "I don't know" when probed for an answer.

All this time, I thought it wasn't possible that he knew what a "yo-yo" toy was. Yesterday, on our back porch, Riley and I were having a water fight and he delightfully began saying "yo-yo" over and over. I sat him on my lap and said, what is "yo-yo", like I have done dozens of times before, not expecting an answer, when Riley looked me in the eye in disbelief that I could not understand this concept. "Up, down and all round", Riley said giving me a visual with his hands.

I was slightly taken a back. I don't believe he is talking about the toy "yo-yo", but the energy level, instead. Yo-yo is everything, the universe, his safe word, his chi, his zen, his meditative emptiness, it is all incompassing, "up, down and all around".