Susan Senator

I know I’m kind of obsessed with Nat, with figuring him out and expressing my feelings about him. I’m so glad to have a blog, so I can get it out, tease it apart. When I get sick of being a blogger, but I want to write, Ned asks why I don’t just write it for myself; why do I have to publish it on the Internet?

Because it wouldn’t feel as real to me. The stuff I write that I don’t show anyone — that stuff feels stupid, half-assed. As I write this I’m wondering if this one will fall flat. But I don’t think so, because I have that feeling that there’s a pull in here somewhere.

I need to say my thoughts out loud — in this case, onscreen. But when I can’t write, I talk to myself. Especially in my car. That’s when I figure a lot of things out, driving to some dumb place or another. It isn’t enough just to think it: I have to say it.

So I wonder if it’s the same for Nat, the way he talks to himself in his own language of stretched out or half-swallowed English. Does he have to hear it out loud? Does the out loud make him feel more here? Less lonely? What is Nat’s usual state like? He moves from room to room, bed to couch to chair, and then maybe perches on top of our coffee table. He makes his sounds, very high-pitched and then low. Suddenly there will be a word I recognize, and I often jump in and nab it. Sometimes he likes it when I do that, sometimes he doesn’t.

I think that he doesn’t like it when there is an expectation that he respond a certain way. I think at those times he does not want the hand offered to him. He wants his words out there, and just out there, moving forever outward into space. I, on the other hand, need to throw my words outward like fishing line, hoping they’ll catch and bring me something lovely.

In this way we are very different, Nat and I.

This dynamic played out in two different ways today. This afternoon I told him that his one-on-one wasn’t coming. He said, “Heeyah John.”

I said, “You’re thinking about John.”

He said, “No.”

I said, “But you said ‘John!'”

“No-oo.”  And he put his hands over his ears.  I thought I’d upset him, but then he started laughing, jumped up, and left the room happy.

At dinner tonight Ned started talking about how he was going out to a Django meetup.  “When will you be home?” I asked.

Nat picked his head up from staring at his food and said to us, “Yes, Daddy will be home.”  To me, this meant: “I’m anxious (or curious) about you going out. That’s different from our usual.”

“Well, Daddy’s going out now, but he’ll be back at 9,” I rushed to explain.

“Yes,” Nat said. And then, “heeyah home.”

Okay, he said “home.” But I remembered this afternoon and I didn’t want to pop this sweet bubble, this moment of mutual understanding encased in the most fragile of membranes.  So I said as quietly as possible, “Yes, he’ll be home at 9.” I didn’t look at him for long, and I did not ask it. I did not put it to him with any expectation or bridge to me. All I did was blow out a gentle reassurance of the temporary quality of this break in the routine.

And he looked at me nervously, knowing what I was doing.  Without my expectant sentence swinging upward on its last words, hanging heavily in expectation of him, he was okay with my understanding him and repeating it. Because it was not too much pressure on him, the pressure of connecting, he could simply answer: “Yes.” It makes sense to me. In a world that judges your intelligence by how well you spew words, it must feel awfully threatening to be on the spot if your words lay hidden from you.