Don’t eat the Dieffenbachia! It’s hard to keep up with a two-year-old when the world is full of wonderment, where all she wants to do is touch, taste-test, and toddle off to her next amusement. When I play with her my grown-up-ness disappears as I dunk my head inside a thirty-gallon, ceramic planter—Aaa-oooo-ga! Aaa-oooo-ga! Charlie, can you hear the echo? She scurries over in her Oshkosh overalls to put her head inside next to mine. Her tiny voice: Aaa-ooooooh! Aaa-ooooooh! More? More? Passersby share in our glee as we echo-test every planter we see. They say you can’t bury your head in the sand to ignore the ills of the world. But no one said anything about sticking your head in a giant pot to teach your granddaughter the magic of sound.
I text my son
after the earthquake
… blinking ellipses …
