Meet Your Language Where It Is

On learning languages, (iconic) T-shirt logos & what I swore I would never say to my children and...did

In yoga class, one of my favourite teachers often says: “Meet your body where it is”. What she means is that our bodies and our yoga practices differ from day to day, even hour to hour, and a pose we could do one way yesterday might not be the same way we can do it today. Perhaps our leg will not stretch as far, or the torso will twist only a fraction of what it did last week, or maybe you will lift off in crow pose when last week it felt impossible. It is also, at least for me, a permission to be gentle with oneself: only you know your body best and what it is holding in every moment and what it has been through. Be gentle with it, respect it and surrender to how much it offers you in the moment, whether that is a lot, or less than you expected.

I keep thinking about this idea of meeting my body where it is in the context of language. I have been beating myself up for not learning more Spanish this past year. We are going back to Spain soon for a few weeks and I promised myself last time we left, I would improve before our next trip. I have not improved. I had every intention of getting back to learning but somehow, time ran out. I fear I have actually regressed as we canceled our trip last year so it has been a while since I was immersed in the language. (I have been learning Spanish for more than 20 years on and off so it is definitely a long game.)

What if I met my language where it is, at least for now? Instead of regretting not learning more, I could brush up on what I already know. Or, I could also wing it and hope for the best once I get there. This is not to say we should not be striving to learn more, to improve, to keep using language(s) so that we do not attrite or lose them because sadly, it happens faster than we can imagine. But we can also meet our language(s) in those aspirational moments some days, and on others, we can meet them exactly where they are with as little judgement as possible. The same goes for our children’s language(s): As we meet our languages where they are, we can also meet our children’s language(s) in whatever form or level that is and then, move forward together. Note to self.

From yoga-inspired self-help talk to…And Just Like That. Yes, I am watching the Sex and the City spin-off. I am sorry, but I have always loved Carrie Bradshaw and the New York scenes in SATC so I will put up with the ridiculousness of this show and new season. And it is ridiculous. I am mentioning it not as a confessional, because, who cares even if I feel the need to tell you I balance it with very good TV (!) and never reality (but no judgement!) but because there were two language-related things in last week’s episode I want to discuss.

The first one is about communication through emojis, a storyline that felt immediately dated and incredibly lazy but let’s discuss anyway. Carrie sends Aidan a voice-to-text note about a table she wants to buy for their house. For those not watching, all you need to know is the couple is in a long-distance relationship. Aidan is currently living in a different state because he wants to be present in his children’s lives who live with their mom, his ex, in Virginia. Carrie is in NY, mostly going out for lunch and drinks and has a lot more free time than Aidan who does not respond right away to her text. Should Aidan have responded right away? This question deserves some nuance because the couple is in a long-distance relationship and that is hard, plus, Carrie is trying to decorate a house they will both eventually live in and Aidan makes furniture so this would matter to him.

But I am interested in the question of immediacy as it relates to all of us. I know this has been asked elsewhere before, but why are we expected to respond immediately to texts? It is something I think about often, especially as I always forget to respond to voice notes. And yet, I am also programmed to expect a quick response.

Aidan finally responds to Carrie with a 👎. I think this is an acceptable response to a question whether he is into a table or not. Easy and fast. Carrie does not agree and replies with 🙄. Is she responding by rolling her eyes to the use of the thumbs down emoji and maybe the time it took Aidan to send it, or that Aidan does not like the table? We will never know. As far as communication goes, I get the thumbs down, the eye roll, not so much.

If you want more about emojis in the context of multilingual family life, here is something I wrote in Mother Tongue Tied in a chapter devoted mostly to 💩:

In multilingual contexts, emojis reinforce ideas, emotions, actions, and objects, sometimes also adding cultural context, encouraging engagement and multimodality of language simplifying communication, and fostering emotional connection. Non-verbal modalities, or means of expression, such as emojis used between parents and children, can also be independent of language choice in emotion work with the caveat that they do not replace the role of language in maintaining parent–child connections and intergenerational intimacy. The use of emojis and other digital practices are forms of kinship ‘interwoven within the everyday’,maintaining closeness among friends and family and informing carework, not only at a distance but across generations.

In some ways, emojis can take away the emotion work of language with a single symbol and in other ways, they add to it through (mis)interpretation and symbolism.

The other thing that caught my attention in the last episode is when Carrie’s new Tom Hardy-lookalike landscape architect comes over wearing a “Dead Wait” T-shirt. She wants to know the meaning behind the logo, he holds off and only later, when she asks again, reveals it is a name of a band he used to be in. Wait (!), maybe it is symbolic of how Carrie will eventually feel about Aidan in their relationship, a.k.a. “dead weight” or “wait” meaning the waiting Aidan asked Carrie to do in their relationship? It’s dead! So many theories about a slim-fit grey tee I highly doubt a landscape architect would wear to his first meeting with a client. But the kicker: if I heard correctly in the episode, the character, who is a landscape architect creating a new garden for Carrie after her recent rat infestation is named Adam Gardens. Nominative determinism¹ for the win!

I am going to pivot here while staying on the topic of shirt logos in order to share an old photo with you I came across at my mom’s place on our last visit to Canada. It made me instantly nostalgic for the oversized sweatshirts and pale blue Levi’s 501s of the 90s and it reminded me how I need to write about logos perhaps in a mini series format as there is so much to say. In ancient Greek, “logos” has a broad meaning that includes or can be translated to, “word”, “principle”, “speech”, “discourse” and “reason”. I have been drafting something on ball-cap logos since my ball-cap summer last year when I wore a hat every day due to hair loss from medical treatment. I now have a large collection of ball caps and always try to read the increasingly small type on caps others are wearing. I have yet to publish this essay as I am not sure I have much more to say on hat logos other than, like logos on anything we wear, they can tell us a lot about what people believe and stand for. (I stopped wearing my red ball cap last year with “Burrata, Tomato, Past” because I did not want anyone to see me in a red hat just in case!) But stay tuned as maybe there is more to say on ball caps.

Back to that photo. It is from a summer camp I went to every year from childhood well into my teens. I adored it and have many fond memories. Here is a group of us girls, probably early-to-mid 90s all wearing our cherished Club Monaco sweatshirts one evening ahead of the nightly campfire. I am the last one on the right in case it is not obvious. Side note: I wish I could hug that girl right now and tell her how great she is because teen self-esteem is a real downer. There are a few items of clothing I regret not hanging on to from my youth and my forest green Club Monaco sweatshirt is one of them. If you grew up in Canada in the 90s, you know how iconic this logo was. If not and you want to read more, this is a good primer.

Lastly, I want to share something I have said to my children, not once, not twice but three times this month. It is something I swore I would never say. It is something that goes against everything I stand for in our multilingual life! (Paywalled for privacy as it is about my kids.)