On Yiddish and Other Ancient Forms of Communication

Posted September 07, 2007

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"I like Yiddish words," Birdy announces. She's sprawled on her back pushing her legs into pajama bottoms in such miniscule increments that movement is invisible to the naked eye. If you took one picture every minute for four hours, then sped it up, it would look like a film of a normal someone getting into pajamas normally. But if you were Andy Warhol, you'd shoot it in real time, then you'd show it without an intermission, and everyone's stomach would rumble audibly through the final hour -- like mine is doing now. I'm already thinking about how after the kids go to bed, Michael and I will pop corn and douse it in Cabot cheddar powder and get our sheets all popcorny and cheesy while we watch Weeds. Every night we confirm the children's worst fears by saving all the fun stuff for after they go to bed. A friend of mine was once at a dinner party where the kids woke up and wandered downstairs in their pajamas -- and the grown-ups were playing Monopoly and screaming with laughter, a Costco gallon jug of jellybeans open on the table. I imagine those children could never be persuaded to go to bed again for as long as they lived.

"What Yiddish words do you know?" I ask her, and Birdy says, "Ummm...I guess none." "Well I bet something made you think of Yiddish, right?" I wish Birdy had known my grandfather who used to dine in fancy French restaurants where he'd insist on ordering his steak frites in Yiddish; she seems to have inherited his meshuga joie de vivre. "Well," Birdy is saying. "I'm thinking of The Cat in the Hat? You know. Yiddish words. Lakhee, lakha. Ozavim." She says this all very guttural-like, and my half-Jewish heart swells with pride -- like a soup-soaked matzoh ball -- despite the somewhat dubious Yiddishness of these words. "It was Sam's family talk? And his dad read it to us in Yiddish," Birdy is explaining. "Lakho, lakhee" she says. "Alacazoo." Ah yes -- from all the famous Yiddish magic shows! "Now I pull a rabbit from my own tuckus. Alacazoo!"

When I think about Birdy growing up, I hope that she'll always bounce through life in her joyful rubber-ball way and that she'll always allow me the privilege of her affection. But what I know won't last -- because we've watched Ben grow out of it -- is the tendency towards wacko pronouncements. "The only thing that comes out of your pipe is poop and pee and farts," Birdy announced from the bathroom last night, then added, "Well, and spit comes out your pipe." (Mum's the word! We don't want to scare any pipe smokers.) Last week she patted my waist and said, "I grew in your universe." Which, in a weird philosophical way, is sort of accurate. Ben had been asking about scars and stitches, shaping various inquiries into my C-sections and how they had differed from vaginal births (These questions constantly skirt Ben's heebie-jeebie threshold; sometimes you see him visibly shudder.) I realized suddenly that I'd been using the word "tummy" which, given his sophisticated questioning, seemed a little off. And so I'd explained about the uterus, explained further about it being an organ. There was one of those inscrutable silences where you watch your children's faces and can only imagine their blazing synapses, the lunatic images they're generating. "Not an organ like a church piano," I added quickly, and Ben said, "Oh! I was just picturing how I was a tiny baby inside one of those booming pipes." But -- and here's the thing that blows me away -- he was totally kidding. He gets it enough to make a joke about it! I can hardly believe it's come to this.

But not for Birdy yet -- no, not yet, thank goodness. "When you were pregnant you had a cast on your tummy," she's explaining to me. And I realize that she's thinking of the belly cast hanging in our stairway -- the one Michael shaped around my torso with plaster gauze right before Ben was born. She has probably pictured pregnancy as a 9-month-long injury -- like a broken leg -- me hobbling around on crutches, my tummy in a cast. Ben corrects her. "No Birdy! It's not a cast like that! It was just an art project." And Birdy says, simply, "Oh. Phew." Phew indeed.

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by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

On Yiddish and Other Ancient Forms of Communication

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