“Will you buy me some papers?”
This seems like such a strange question when you think that it came from the lips of my 3-year-old daughter. That’s right, Elizabeth asked one of the other children – the 4-year-old no less – if he would buy her some papers so she could go to Mexico with the rest of the children and her MeeMa.
If you haven’t met Elizabeth or haven’t heard me brag about my extremely intelligent daughter (I admit that it I could be more than a little biased in this matter) one of the most surprising things to the people we meet is that Elizabeth speaks both English and Spanish. I’m not sure it is possible for a 3-year-old to be “fluent” in a language, but Elizabeth doesn’t just speak Spanish, she also thinks in Spanish.
We’ve all heard of the person who has a second or third language. In Elizabeth’s case, she has two “first” languages. From the time she was 14 weeks old, she has been going to MeeMa’s house. And there she has been given the gift to learn to speak in Spanish at the same time her mother and I have been teaching her to speak English. It is truly one of the most incredible gifts Elizabeth will ever get in her life.
On more than one occasion Elizabeth has chastised her mother and I because we don’t speak Spanish. She thinks that everyone should speak both Spanish and English.
Several times each year MeeMa heads back to Mexico to see her family and she usually takes along the children that have become Elizabeth’s “brothers and sisters.” When one of these trips is approaching, it is inevitable that Elizabeth will start asking us if she can go to Mexico with MeeMa. We’ve told her for some time that because she didn’t have a passport she could not go with the others. Since the concept of a passport is somewhat lost on a 3-year-old, MeeMa told her she had to have special papers to go to Mexico. That’s what prompted her to ask one of the other children to "buy her some papers."
This afternoon, my wife and I spent more than 30 minutes at the downtown post office with Elizabeth taking pictures and filling out forms so we could get her a passport. While she didn’t care for the wait and didn’t want to sit still for very long, the thought of getting some papers really put a smile on her face.
When MeeMa and kids head off to Mexico this spring it is very likely that Elizabeth will be headed south as well. By then she’ll have her passport and someone will have “bought her some papers.”
