More Than Words Can Say

Clara Grace could not seem to get enough time with her new baby brother. “Come here, come here,” she often soothed as she wrapped her arms around his body as if to carry him from her mommy’s lap dispite his weight being over half her own. “Everett’s arms,” she constantly announced proudly patting and admiring her brother’s stumpy appendages, “Everett’s hands, Everett’s fingers.” At the slightest sound of discomfort from her baby brother, Clara Grace was immediately by his side patting his tummy vigorously and sounding the alarm, “Ah oh, Everett crying. Everett crying.” “Where’s Everett go?” was her regular inguiry whenever she and her mommy found themselves in a quiet house with a sleeping baby and “Want to see Everett,” was her constant request whenever the baby is in view. There was one phrase however which continued to baffle Clara Grace’s mommy. “Look-a-lump, look-a-lump,” Clara Grace was often heard cooing over the little boy. Her mommy gathered that the expression most certainly conveyed tenderness as it was always accompanied by all manner of hugs, kisses, and pats. The word for word meaning of this term eluded her though. Perhaps the expression is one of those rare ones for which there is no sufficient translation to convey the emotion in the limited vocabulary of our language.