Sign Language
When my boyfriend left for work earlier this week he made the sign for water at me, as in: drink water. If you want to know how to do the sign for water, you hold three fingers up in a W and tap your index finger to your chin. Some of the signs that I have learned have turned out to be slightly, or completely, incorrect, but I persevere with them anyway. Knowing that they are incorrect makes me slightly ashamed as I perform them, I hesitatingly bring the clutches of my two sets of fingers together, and apologetically say the accompanying word. The teacher tells me cheerfully that it doesn’t matter, that we are trying to encourage language, not replace it. She nods as I do a different sign to everyone else in class, my son looking around with his big beautiful eyes, confused but happy to be involved, as usual.
I am trying to encourage language in myself, as well. I am aching through the month, as we all are, my fingers outstretched to touch the end of it. It’s a well-worn cliche to talk about how long January feels, but it is insane, isn’t it, that it’s still going on? Usually the months slip by so easily, but this one, like gristle, demands chewing and chewing and chewing, and I make no progress. It is too cold to swim, or even to walk very far without tiring of the grey. I feel confined, muted, tedious. Anyway, the endlessness of the month encourages me to read big books. I’m reading The Long Form by Kate Briggs, in which a woman carries her baby around and reads a secondhand copy of A History of Tom Jones. It’s very boring, in a good way! It is the perfect January book if you are also feeling similarly.
There are hundreds of seagulls outside on the street as I type this. I love to hear their boisterous, bullying sound. They land on the cars and tear the bins apart. They are the roar of my hidden self, just underneath the surface, yellow-rimmed, black eyed beauties, horrible, puffed-chest things.