The Tower of Babel in the 11th Month

In Sigrid Nunez’s beautiful book, What Are You Going Through, she writes:

What if all this time we have misunderstood the story of the Tower of Babel?…What if it was not just to different tribes but to each individual human being that a separate language was given, unique as fingerprints. And, step two, to make life among humans even more strifeful and confounding, he beclouded their perception of this. So that while we might understand that there are many peoples speaking many different languages, we are fooled into thinking that everyone in our own tribe speaks the same language we do.

The main character, whose ex is floating this theory with her, asks: “Even people in love?”

He replies, “People in love most of all.”

I’ve been thinking about that beautiful passage a lot in the last couple of days. Dear reader, I’ve been struggling. My daughter and I are very much in love and do not speak the same language.

Hers is more sparse, more physical, more pleasure-seeking. Mine is full of duty and words, words, words. I can see them overwhelm her. I am trying to use less of them, to ask her if she needs a hug even when my body wants to flee the house and scream into the wind and be alone.

I guess it is in this way that our little home has become a Tower of Babel. I clean her room in a huff, my way of saying, “I need order. I need to breathe. I live here, too.” She sees a clean floor on which to reassemble her endless Lego creations and collections (coins, rubber bands, chalk dust, tiny rubber animals).

She asks if she can listen to another audio book (her current obsession: The Mysterious Benedict Society), her way of saying, “I need to be alone. The Zoom meetings are too much.” I wonder if audio books count as screen time, if she spends too much time alone, if I should feel guilty, if I can get one more piece of work done before my brain loses all capacity for coherent thought.

She says snack over and over again. I hear carbs sugar carbs sugar carbs sugar.

She says, “Do I haaavvvvveeeee to?” I tell her I don’t hear whining, could she please use her big girl voice. She gives me a big girl look instead.

Her dad says, “Will you set the table?” Instead she takes the puzzle we assembled today and lays it out on the floor in concentric squares.

She says, “No!” like a sharp little jab of a fist. I hear Veruca Salt sliding down the shoot with the golden egg. I say, “No,” when she asks for dessert, but hasn’t eaten any vegetables, and she hears her sister sliding her candy drawer open with anticipation, tearing the wrapper off of an old piñata victory.

I say “jammies and brush teeth jammies and brush teeth jammies and brush teeth.” She doesn’t even hear it the third time. Should I say it a fourth or just wander down the stairs and hope another mother will arrive to finish the parenting of the day? (John is doing the dishes).

Usually it’s when I give up trying to be understood that some signal gets through the noise. She comes down the stairs, quiet as a mouse, and curls up in my lap where I’m typing away. Her hair smells like Marigold detangler. Her toenails need to be cut. I resist the urge to make sense of it all. I just notice the weight of her.

Her body is a language I know very well. As is mine for her. And for now, today, in this endless winter, in this 11th month of sheltering in together, that’s all we’ve got. It will have to be, it is, it really is, enough.