Dreaming in Three Languages

“Mama!” TK calls from the top of the stairs. It’s 6:45 a.m., and the house is still Alaskan-October dark. I stumble to the bottom of the stairs and look up. My silly little girl is smiling expectantly, her arms extended to me. “Downstairs, Mama?” I nod, and climb to gather her in my arms. She leans in and kisses me all over my face. “Hi, Mama, hi!” Then she points toward her dark room and whispers, “Shh. Bunny asleep. Shh.”

What’s incredible in this moment is not so much TK’s happy waking demeanor – though that brightens every one of my mornings – but the fact that she has learned to use so much of the English language in only six weeks. Six weeks ago, my daughter heard her Ethiopian nannies speak only Amharic, Ethiopia’s written language. Three months before that, she had only heard Hadiya, her birth family’s language.

And now she gains at least two English words a day. She strings them into sentences with creative syntax; she imitates my intonations and my gestures. She explores language’s geography with a true explorer’s glee. When I pointed to the Mendenhall Glacier on our hike a couple weeks ago and said “glacier,” Mitike spent the next half an hour chanting the word – “GLASH-er, GLASH-er” – as if she wanted to taste it on her tongue, to touch it the way she stretched out her small hand to touch the spongy sphagnum moss on an alder tree.

As her mama, I’m simply amazed at how rapidly she is learning to communicate. As a teacher, I’m proud, though I think her aptitude is due to her strong-willed determination, not my instruction. As a writer, I’m witnessing an ongoing found poem – composed daily from the world TK experiences.

The poem begins with Mitike’s first word: "ababa", a baby-babble version of "abba", the Hadiyan word for “father” – a word Mitike carried from the tukul in which she was born in southern Ethiopia to an orphanage in Addis Ababa (where the nannies spoke Amharic, not Hadiya) to a yellow house in Juneau, Alaska (where everyone spoke English, with a smattering of Spanish). How does a toddler keep a word – how does she clutch it tightly in her small hands, the way she clutches the day’s chosen toy? She points to a Time magazine cover of Barack Obama and she shouts, “Ababa!” She insists Mama check out the library book Uh-Oh again and again, so she can point to the brown-skinned grandfather on the last page and whisper, “Ababa. Ababa.” She falls in love with chanting the word “Obama” at a rally because of its phonetic similarity to that precious Hadiyan word she first knew.

In the poem’s second line are the Amharic words – small revelations of orphanage care: "woh" (baby-babble version of “WOO-ha” for water), "a-MY-aye" (the word for “mother”, which TK called her favorite nannies and now calls me and Ali), "caca" (which Amharic-speakers inherited from the Italians, who briefly occupied Ethiopia), and "oh" (baby-babble version of “ah-woh”, which means “yes”).

Mitike the poet begins a new stanza. In the quiet blank space between the second and third lines, she furrows her tiny brow at the pale-skinned woman murmuring strange new words in her ear. When she falls asleep at night, it is to this woman’s singing – and even the lilt and lift of the music is different from everything she has known.

In the third line, the poet writes just one word – her first English word, and exactly the word a smiling, sparkly little girl should learn first: "yay". “Yay!” she calls out suddenly at the Addis guesthouse, when her new mama has just balanced an entire tower of Duplo Legos. She raises her arms, like she has seen the new mama do. “Yay, yay!”

"Mama" in the fourth line. For days, “mama” described a thin photo album I mailed to the orphanage back in June, when I completed my acceptance paperwork. TK slept with it, carried it everywhere, showed it to people and said solemnly, “Mama.” Then she would call for me: “Aye-AY!” Gradually, she realized I was the mama in the photos, and she gave Ali the name Aye-Ay.

The poem picks up its pace. Water – to drink, to stomp my feet in, to watch fall from the sky, to point out to Mama and hear her say “ocean”. Apple – for all fruit remotely round, regardless of size. Photo – for all cameras. Home (she says “hah-mm!"), which she exclaims with joy every time we walk in the door.

Now nonsense words she has made up: "eye-YAH-vo" for all writing utensils, "boppo" for food, "gossie" for balls and socks and her brother.

Now the poem’s words run together, as TK learns faster and faster: Helicopter – birdies – airplane – car (she says “nah-car”) – juice – milk (she says “mawk”) – coffee – two – three – one – I’llcomeback! – Iwuvyou – Good night! – off – uppy! – down! -- alldone – allgone -- puppy – kitty cat – fishy – coatandhatcoatandhat -- BunnycacacacaBunny? – asleep – Bunnyasleepshhh – Katieasleepshhh – I’llcomeback! – eat? – cookie – please? – thankyouMama – you’rewelcome – phone – Nanaphone? – IwuvyouI’llcomebackgoodnight! – bye-bye – hello -- brushyourteeth! -- bearwhere'dhegobear? -- GLASH-er! -– hi, mama, hi – Comeon! Comeon, Tim, comeon! -- onetwothreeweee!

The poet yawns – “Baby Beluga, Mama?” It’s time for bed. We’ll sing the Raffi song together -- she'll point out the glacier on one of the pages -- and then she will drink her warm milk and point to the light: “Off please, Mama!” I’ll cuddle her close while she fiddles with the two Obama campaign buttons she insists I pin to her pajamas and then – finally – falls asleep. In what language will she dream? All three? Barack Obama campaigning on the tukul’s doorstep, the Addis Ababa nannies waving to the seagulls from a boat in Alaska, her mama lifting her onto her shoulders in the warm Ethiopian sunshine. . .