Salty and Sweet

First, you must know these four things about G. 1)Food is a serious occasion for G. 2)She dresses for the occasion, sometimes she even changes during a meal, a few times. 3)She prefers not to be interrupted. 4) She closes her eyes and chews when she's tasting a new food and has done this ever since her first bite of real food, banana. When I described how the banana tasted, she looked at me like I was a co-conspirator who understood how great food is.

You must also know that I trained parents to describe the world about their hard-of-hearing and deaf children with as much detail as they could muster. "Food" isn't just "yummy." Cheerios are crunchy and sweet and smell like Midwestern fields after a rain and remind me of my childhood and calm me down when I feel grumpy. I have raised both of my kids talking like a maniac to them until they started to talk like a maniac back to me. This outcome is great. They have large and fun vocabularies and they are not afraid to use the words they've discovered.

This outcome is also embarrassing. G and I were walking alongside a group of carpenters working on a house. The air was cool, the sun was out, our noses were running. G started to lick her snot. I said, "Ew. G. I don't think boogars taste very good. Let's get a tissue." She says, "Naw. Salty and sweet. Perfect." To which, the Glaswegians double-over laughing and gargling the words "salty and sweet" in their thick and lovely accents.