[September 2024] Though the physical photographs have long since disappeared, I can still close my eyes and picture Céline, the exchange student from Paris who lived with my aunt Cherrie for a year. Her short brown hair, stonewashed blue jeans, shiny boots, black leather jacket. She seemed so chic and cool, so mature, though she must’ve been only about twenty.  I remember wanting to talk with her. I remember the turquoise beret I insisted on wearing even when the temperature climbed and the weather held no reason for hats. I remember the classes my parents signed me up for in the room with the plastic sand table and primary color wooden blocks, where I learned “Bonjour” and “S’il vous plaît” in what must have been my squeaky kindergarten voice. Or maybe it was first grade. I remember the snow globe my grandmother gave me that year; no matter how much I shook it, that ceramic angel retained its shape, was exactly the same each time the dust settled. Recollections, on the other hand, are shimmery, shifty creatures –  different with every glance. Memory, language, home: what does a venn diagram of these look like? Where are the overlaps, where are the distinctions, and where does it all live in the body?

My grandma Mae was Québécoise, among other things. But her voice was flat, no accent like Céline’s. I only ever heard her speak English. That year Céline was with us, something happened in Mae’s eyes every time I faltered through “Un, deux, trois…”.   Years later I learned that the sounds and gestures we make while growing literally change how we engage with our own anatomy – have you ever seen a chart like a linguist uses? The other time I got to practice tonguing these un/familiar words was during the summers. Each late July, my parents packed my brother and I into the tan buick sedan alongside stuffed knapsacks. Fluorescent foam boogie boards went in the trunk; mine was purple and blue, my brother’s green and orange. 

We’d arrive to Maine sleepy and silly, drop our cargo in the tiny cottage beside the train tracks, and run several blocks to the beach. When I was quite small, I met a young girl there whose family visited from Québec. Her name was Amélie. We traded shovels, sand castle tips, sun hats. We sprinted to the water and back together. We laughed a lot. I was amazed that her family stayed at the beach for a whole month; after that first encounter, they got to know which week was “ours” and looked for us the next few summers. The year we went and they were nowhere to be found, I spent the week wrapped in my towel reading books, refused to enjoy the beach. This was before the world wide web reached far enough to salve missed connections, and we had never thought to trade phone numbers.  

I am not sure why the French classes ended. By the time I asked to take it up again, it was eighth grade and the school offered only Spanish. I studied five years and loved it, as I have always loved languages and the worlds contained inside each grammar, each vocabulary. At one point, I wanted to be an interpreter, looked up to someone I met at a conference at Gallaudet who knew fourteen languages: seven spoken and seven signed. Then for many reasons, life went in another direction and though there is always loss blossoming amidst change, now I am satisfied with where I have landed, if also a bit surprised. 

When I was two decades into my life, which now is two decades ago, I visited Montréal for the first time. I remember brick and cobblestone, terracotta and dappled gray. I remember fancifully wondering if I’d run into Amélie and if we’d recognize one another. I remember wondering if Céline had visited this place. I remember shivering in a large stone plaza, gazing with wonder at stained glass windows in a church nearby. I remember climbing stairs at the olympic stadium towards the sound of all the countries’ flags snapping in a high wind at the top. 

After hours walking through those pulsing syllables, the beautiful cloud of words outside, I sat in the hotel room and wept. My then-girlfriend was mystified. I remember the tender, soft feeling in my chest, and not being able to explain it to her. I didn’t fully understand it then. I’m not sure I fully understand it now.  What it means for those dry riverbeds of linguistic synapses to be suddenly overflowing. Like finding a long-lost home, lost so long ago it was not me but my grandmother who lost it. I have felt the same sweet softness when surrounded with the sounds of Mi’kmaq and Anishinaabe. Kwe’ kwe’. Aniin.  I wonder if I’d feel it with German – Hallo – and Scottish Gaelic – Haló –, which I’ve heard bits of but never been fully immersed in. Sometimes my brain will sweep slivers of five languages into just a sentence or two, like a bright circus ride spinning lights in multiple hues, careening through the words of my ancestors, and even on occasion ancestors who I don’t directly descend from: Hola, me’talein, je suis, well, fine, onishishin, et toi? As I write this sort-of-sentence, lean into playfulness, I am simultaneously aware that people have died for language. For the right to speak, preserve, pass on a language. 

In grad school I studied intergenerational trauma and resilience, how these shape our neural pathways. I wanted a rational framework for something that is not often experienced rationally in the moment. It turns out a venn diagram is not the tool to map what belongs to the heart, which surely is where memory, language, and home live. And so here I am in the world, walking a nonlinear path towards some place whole. Or towards the place in me that knows wholeness, has known it all along. I may never see Céline or Amélie again, though I continue to feel connected to them, albeit peripherally. On my left foot, a tattoo, which I got years ago: the Chartres cathedral labyrinth. Were my Québécois ancestors descended from somewhere near there? I don’t know. I don’t know, but I wonder. And wonder, perhaps, is the only answer there is. 

Who do you carry in your body, in your words, in the way your mouth shapes sounds, in what moves your hands to shape signs? And how do each of these sparks of light/dark carry you?