Full of Beep

She speaks Beep. I do not know the language. But I am trying.

My 5-year-old daughter, Chelsea, has always been a bit on the shy side. Her primary objective in life is to be cozy, and to spend time with her mom and grandparents. She goes to school and tolerates it well enough, but school can’t hold a candle to sitting quietly on the couch, sniffing her blankie while watching TV. Or sitting at the kitchen table with her mom, doing a jigsaw puzzle while sipping apple cider.

After both of our school days are done and we’re home together in the house, I ask Chelsea how her day was. She glances up at me from behind her blankie, keeps walking, and says just one word: “Beep.” I tell her that I’d really like to know how she’s doing. Again: “Beep.” For my third try, I get a bit more specific and direct: “Chelsea, can you please tell me what you did today in school?”

You guessed it. Beep.

I don’t understand where it comes from, or why the girl has turned into a blonde-haired version of Road Runner. But whatever the reason is for this girl’s affection for Beepness, it has happened. And it seems to offer her the same comforts that the soft blankie does: A place in which the demands and stresses of the big, wide world need not be considered. It’s a world where you don’t hear about homework or new math problems or Monday-morning wakeups. You just spend your time counting beep.

I work a lot with language, as a teacher and writer. And I know that we can communicate in a lot of different ways. In literature, popular writers such as Junot Diaz and Khaled Hosseini often bring multiple languages into their prose. In politics, campaigns resort to metaphor-loaded jargon that often obscures any real talk about issues. In our daily lives, many of us communicate via e-mail, status postings and text messages in a short-hand, symbolic language that might have confused even a lover of invented words such as Shakespeare. And in baseball, there are entire books devoted to explaining the language of this sport, so that the casual viewer might have some idea how to tell the difference between a “Baltimore chop,” a “little dribbler” and a “screaming liner.”

So if we’re playing so much with language already, why not toss a little kindergarten Beep into the mix? There’s room under the tent for that as well. Yet while playing around with language is completely fine, the use of said language to avoid ordinary conversations can be a bit more troubling.

So I am working on cracking the Beep code. My initial approach has been to join in the game. So in recent days, when I’ve seen my little girl, I’ve asked her this: “Chelsea, how was beep today?”

“Beep,” she responds.

“Sure,” I say, “but did you read beep in class? Or did you draw beep instead?”

She cracks a smile, and we play at this game for a while. I still don’t get much specific information about the school day, but I do feel like she’s letting me into her world somewhat.

Last Friday, as my wife and older daughter were at Brownies, I got a couple of hours together with Chelsea. I picked her up from school, we did the Beep dance for a while in the car, then we headed out to Target together. We walked through the aisles, looked at some stuff, then I bought some things from the pharmacy and food sections.

As we arrived home, Chelsea hugged her mom and told her about our trip to the store. And while her recap began in a happier tone, Chelsea soon shot her mom a more serious look and lowered her voice to a register of disappointment.

“And at the store,” Chelsea said, “Daddy didn’t buy me one single thing.”

Some ideas need no secret language to convey. I shook my head at these words, then looked at my wife with a smile. As for Chelsea’s material desires, I’ve been there, done that. But on this afternoon, I was under the impression that our time together was all that mattered.

Seems like Daddy was full of beep.