Recording the Sound of My Child’s Voice
Many parents these days seem to obsessively celebrate their children’s developments by snapping photo after photo on their cellphone cameras.
Me? I record my son’s words in my notebook, on my phone, in my laptop. I want the audio record, and the written one; they capture one of the most evanescent aspects of childhood – the linguistic shooting star of early speech. I’m reminded often of its fleeting nature, even if sometimes I can do little more than marvel to myself.
Take one recent afternoon, when my preschooler, Leo, was riding his balance bike along the sidewalks of our neighborhood. It’s a pedal-less two-wheeler that allows him to careen along at a clip, sometimes to my dismay. Running alongside of him as we approached a corner, I began saying “yellow light,” my signal to him that it was time to slow down. “Lello light, lello light, lello, lello,” he said, laughing.
I laughed, too, but inside I thought, “How much longer do I have ‘lello’?” Someday soon, he will learn to say yellow. But nothing will ever sound as lovely as “lello.”