Meet Lucy. In spite of the dear German friends who recently visited and pointed out that babies, technically, are extremely small humans incapable of things like walking or talking, Lucy likes to refer to herself as Beh-bee, and because she knows from going to the playground and from her favorite book (Where is Baby’s Belly Button?) that the world is populated with other babies, she clarifies her meaning by extending her thumb and index finger as far as they will go, bending her wrist at a right angle, and stabbing herself near the breastbone with her pointer.
If I ask her, bist du ein Wuselbär? (are you a chaos bear?) she gives one minimalist head shake and says “no!” in a small, flat, authoritative voice, like a mildly irritated two-foot-tall teacher. There is a clear implication that I ought to have known better. This is how she always says no, whether I am asking her about eating sweet potatoes or telling her that it is time to change her diaper. (Unless she is talking to inanimate objects which are not behaving as she wants them to, in which case it is a hollow, tragic nooooooooo, noooooooo. She said this into the sink the other night when the plastic spinach box she was filling with water tipped over.) Though her no to humans does not vary in execution, it varies greatly in meaning: seconds after pronouncing it in response to the question about sweet potatoes, she may reach for the spoon, dig out a huge chunk of orange mash, hold it in the air with wide eyes and say “Waaaaa-ooooooowww!” before trying to fit it all in her mouth.
The only are you a…? question she will not answer with no! is bist du ein Waschbär, to which she says “Va-pff!” A Waschbär is a wash-bear, which is what Germans call raccoons because they wash their food. It is not clear whether she is agreeing to being a wash-bear or whether the word just combines two things she loves so much that she cannot help repeating it. From her point of view, the most noteworthy objects in any room are sinks and stuffed animals. Sinks she adores because they have faucets, and faucets produce water. When I washed my hands, I used to be startled by a wail coming from just above my right knee: Lucy, wanting the water. Recently, I often feel something firm pushing at my calf, and turn to find her dragging the plastic step stool toward the sink. Her favorite sink to play in is the kitchen one, with the faucet on a hose that telescopes out and back. The other night I came downstairs to find her standing on tiptoe on a backwards chair scooted up to the sink, next to Jim, who was rinsing dishes to put in the dishwasher. She had the red dish brush in her hand, and was leaning as far as she could into the sink (which is hard when it comes to chest height), scrubbing one spot on the bottom of our biggest frying pan in total concentration.
Stuffed animals inspire only slightly less devotion. When she was (even by German standards) almost still a baby, and could barely pull herself up the upright wooden bars of her crib, we ordered three stuffed foxes with plush, cream-and-rust-colored heads and arms, ribbon bows at their throats and ‘bodies’ made of a small white velour blanket lined with satin. For reasons I can’t remember that had to do with first-time parenting indecision, we presented one of them to her much too late into her bedtime routine, when she was already in bed in the nook curtained off from our bedroom, in the half-dark, with no time to get used to it. She loved it instantly, stretching her arms out toward it and laughing with delight at the barely-visible embroidered eyes and nose, the fact of its having a face. This has, since, been her response to all stuffed animals. Beh-beh is the gray teddy bear that is as big as she is (he used to be twice her size). The beanie baby bear of Jim’s (“Huntley,” according to the heart-shaped tag still attached to his ear) is Beh-bee Beh. The raccoon (roughly the size of her torso) that was her uncle Nick’s is, of course, Va-pff. And the triplet foxes, Fuchs in German, one of whom stays in her crib, and one of whom stays at the grandparents’, and one of whom lives in our closet as backup, is Fwa. Today, Beh-beh helped her consent to a toothbrushing (by getting his teeth brushed first). Beh-bee Beh helps her stand diaper changes. Fwa is such a strong sleep cue that when one of his incarnations got loose in the living room during the move from Durham to Portland, she wrapped her arms around him and slumped into a toddler tripod, face down, knees under her, bottom in the air. And Va-pff is always a long-lost best friend, embraced with outstretched arms and cries of greeting.