Hello. The prompt today was very complex. If you would like to see it, visit NaPoWriMo.net, for day 5. Here is my attempt, and trust me, I did not get all twenty pieces in the project. Darn it :)
Language Lesson
Driving home with my son after preschool,
He tells me they are learning Spanish.
“Can you say something in Spanish?”
Emphasizing the first syllable of each word,
he said “Yooness Tooness!”
“What does that mean?”, I ask.
“Yooness Tooness means
When I bite into a pickle
It makes music in my mouth”.
Clearly an idiomatic phrase.
No easy translation in English.
It almost sounded Spanish, the way he rolled it on his tongue.
I repeat it back to him.
He repeats it back to me, and again the translation,
When I bite into a pickle it makes music in my mouth.
Perfectly plausible, and yet so out of left field.
25 years later, I still wonder, where did he get it?
Did he over hear it? Misunderstand the lesson?
Make it up? Clearly not Spanish, but so lovely.
Another parent, perhaps one that knew the language
Might send him back to the drawing board.
Me. I explain idioms to a four year old.
And we adopt Yooness Tooness into our lexicon.
There were variations, but nothing that lasted.
No adverb for how his eyes danced when they saw a pool.
No noun for the grassy smell that sent his feet running.
No metaphor for the delicious morsels of childhood.
Yooness Tooness.
Now I am Megchop to my four year old grandchild.
When I am told “Fauna Tourtella” (Italian?)
Means “There are faces in the trees that see”,
I have google and I can be ready with many replies,
Even though I am Ser del año de la pera,
To be from the year of the pear.
