Voicelessness and Emotional Survival
What is a Wookah?
(Celebrating a Child with "Voice")
M., when you were two and a half, we bought two identical goldfish which we placed in
a small plastic fishbowl that sat in the middle of the kitchen table. One fish you named Mommy
and the other, Daddy. Of course, as soon as they began to swim around, it was impossible to
know which was which. One day (a few months later) we came home from the grocery store
only to find one fish floating belly up at the top of the tank.
"Soooo...," I said, dipping my hand into the tank to scoop up the dead fish, "Who's left?"
"Mommy," you said with certainty.
"What?" I said. I looked at the fish again to see if it had any any identifying marks.
"How do you know it's not Daddy?"
"I know," you said. "It's Mommy."
It was around this time that I first noticed you were a Wookah. What is a Wookah? You
have asked me many times, but my answers have always been incomplete.
First let me tell you what a Wookah is not, just so there is no confusion.
A Wookah is not a Wookie, which we all remember to be a large, but friendly beast from the
Star War movies. While sometimes you make the same noise as a Wookie, particularly when
doing your homework, you are nothing at all like a Wookie.
What then is a Wookah? First of all, a Wookah is a child whose knowledge of
the world belies their age. Take this example:
When you were one and a half years old you were walking down a street in
Northhampton. We were visiting your sister, C., at college. It was nighttime. You
looked across the street at a storefront sign, and you said "ice cream." "What?" I said, shocked.
I looked for a picture of an ice cream cone on the store front. I looked for a person carrying an
ice-cream cone on the street. Something that might have given you a clue. I could find neither.
Only the pink and blue fluorescent letters spelling "ice cream."
Typical of Wookah behavior, the sign on the store next door said "Dry Cleaning,"
but you didn't read that.
Or how about this example:
One day, we were discussing the concept of heaven, and you said:
"Heaven is the attic of the world."
"Heaven is the attic of the world." Hmmm. Let's think about that. It's
above the world, and old things are stored there, things that evoke
memory. One can imagine boxes, rafters and dust--hardly the romantic image
of movies. Good metaphor. How old were you when you made this observation? Not quite three. Obviously a
Wookah.
Wookahs tend toward skepticism. Some, of course, will see this as a fault. Wookahs are
bored by Mr. Rogers, Barbie and Ken dolls, and trite discussions
of family values. Ms. Y., your first grade teacher, once took me aside to tell me what you had
said when the class, on a field trip, happened upon preparations for a Christmas festival. "They
care more about decorating than they do about people's needs," you told her. As you can see, a
Wookah will scramble up Kohlberg's Moral Development Scale as if it were a jungle gym.
Outspokenness and self confidence are certainly some of a Wookah's most notable
traits. All of my previous examples suggest this, so I need not offer more proof. Suffice it to say,
one always know where a Wookah stands.
Finally, the sine qua non of a Wookah is that they have an irreverent relationship with
their father. Mr. J., your second grade teacher, asked
me a few weeks ago whether I remembered what you used to call me. "The idiot," he said,
laughing. You still call me that. Wookahs push the hair on the top of their father's head around
and casually say: "Hmm, the bald spot looks a little bigger today than it looked yesterday." And
of course, fathers of Wookahs say, when they kiss their Wookah good night: "I hate you, pup."
And Wookahs reply: "I hate you, Dad." For Wookahs know all about subtext and irony.
But what happens to Wookahs when they get older, when they become teenagers?
Nothing! Nothing changes! They're still Wookahs. Why would they change? If they rebelled
they'd start watching Mr. Rogers. And how does one bless a Wookah? This stumps me since
blessing a Wookah is much like waxing a car that's still sitting on the showroom floor. There's
simply a limit to how much something or someone can shine. But I can say this: every day I ask
myself, how'd I ever get so lucky as to have a genuine Wookah. For most fathers can only hope
to be as fortunate as that.
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