Din-din-din-din.

My mom shared this a while ago and I have thought of it often. It reminds me so much of Theo.

T.S. Eliot had a big sister named Ada, whom he adored. In 1943, she said, speaking of her famous brother, "When you were a tiny boy, learning to talk, you used to sound the rhythm of sentences without shaping the words--the ups and downs of the thing you were trying to say. I used to answer you in kind, saying nothing yet conversing with you as we sat side by side on the stairs. . . . And now you think the rhythm before the words in a new poem. . . .Such a dear little boy."

Maybe Theo is a future poet; he is constantly babbling complete gibberish to me. Who knows where he comes up with some of his words, but once I figure out what they mean and respond to them, I'm stuck with them. "Duh-na?" means "Can you do this for me?" "Peh" means "Help me do this." "Din-din-din-din" is what he says when reading to himself, with the occasional intelligible word thrown in, like "cloud" or "uh-oh." "Eye" or "Da-da" is "Ida." "Tatu" is "hold you?" (not "thank you" as most people surmise) and so on and so forth. And now I am recording this baby talk with the studied concentration of a devoted anthropologist.

I get frustrated sometimes when I can't understand what Theo is saying. Other times, it's so stinking cute to hear him babble on and on in his own little Theo language that I think I'll probably miss this one day, when he's forming his words like any old boring person on the planet can.