Wanting

Before you begin you must not know the answer.

During the Summer of my daughter's second year, when talking was at best a jumble of kaleidoscopic images, loosely organized containers of experience, book-ended by action and tears, a repetitive refrain emerged for weeks on end: “I want to go home …”

No matter where we were, “home” or not, the refrain continued. Home remained an elusive place of striving, ever unattainable.

Quickly falling into an abyss of rational reasoning that is so often the thwarted goal with two year olds, I found myself wondering what it felt like to “want to go home.” I found myself thinking that perhaps this was indeed a rich and contained means of verbalizing the concept of wanting in general. I also was aware that our beloved nanny was overseas for a month and “home” may have had something to do with this temporary loss. Questioning this with my daughter, the wanting seemed to be given form and shape. Soon enough, “I want to go home” was transformed into “I want Tanya.”

I initially delighted in my ability to allow my child access to the world of words as a means of communicating her inner experience. Yet questions (no doubt permeating my world from constant exposure to postmodern thinking) remained. While seemingly unleashing my daughter's experience, had I also curtailed or deflected it? My daughter was hardly unaware of my pleasure in this whole interaction. She would now laughingly say “I want Tanya” and look to me for my reaction. What she had originally “wanted” was now complicated by a charged and loving exchange. What was it that she wanted? And was she indeed now “home”?

“Home” for Moulton was a complicated affair. This was as much a place of safety as it was a capricious base from which messages about independence and success waffled at best.