Love letters

On Tuesday T. and I spent an hour in a waiting room, while L. finished a therapy appointment. Not long after we had sat down, a little floppy-haired boy ran tumbling in, with his dad close behind. The boy was two, his dad told me, and at that wonderful age when everything out of his mouth was a string of unintelligible sounds--no distinct words, but the sounds were clearly recognizable as questions, statements, exclamations. He pointed, he smiled, he gestured in delightful and easily identifiable ways. He was clearly communicating, and thrilled about it all. I remember that age--the age when a two-year-old's pent-up (or not so pent-up) frustrations give way to communication, and suddenly the tantrums begin to fade as they discover new ways to meet their needs. I think T. has been going through a little of this, too. She's been communicating just fine for some time now (in fact, she never stops communicating), but she's been frustrated with her inability to master some written letters, and can be driven to tears now and again by the fact that some of her letters just don't look like, well, letters. Sometimes, in the two hours/week we spend together in waiting rooms, T. and I will practice the shapes of letters, turning writing into a game as we decorate the tops of letter T's and add swirlies to other letters. I try to take the frustration out of writing. I hesitate to correct her, and think always of L., who hates handwriting and still struggles with it. For him, written communication is a towering wall standing between what he wants to say and how he can say it. These past few weeks, T.'s language and writing skills have really taken off. Not only is speech therapy doing wonders for her pronunciation, but she's been coming home from preschool every day bursting to share the new letters she's learned. On Monday she mastered the "K," and yesterday it was the letter "S." She asks about words constantly, trying to make sense of how they are put together. The other day she surprised us by spelling her name out loud, and when she writes she's making words--words!--made up of shaky, spidery, long-limbed letters. In her eyes I see the same giddy excitement I saw in that two-year-old's face. "I love letters!" she declared the other day, bent over a scraggly letter K. I watched her write, and marveled again at the power of language--whether written or spoken--and how it can transform us all, young and old. T.'s love note to Scott--it's his birthday today!. ********* To celebrate the day, T. and I are making pistachio-cherry cupcakes this afternoon--I'll share the recipe results with you tomorrow, so check back then...