Mama

Like most great moments, the first time that a baby says "Mama" isn't really a single moment, except in history or memory.  The American revolution doesn't really begin with Beacon Hill or Paul Revere or the Declaration of Independence, but with thousands of little disobediences, refusals to pay taxes, resistance of colonial officers.  Nor can we mark the beginning of a war with the annexation of the Sudetenland or the Anschlüss.  But we choose to mark one of the moments of a process as the "real" beginning.

For me, Helena just said Mama.  Said it, in the way that human beings use language to mean something, to do something.  She was sitting on my lap in the hammock, a little tired, but happy to be outside and looking at the trees.  Then she asked for my fingers so she could stand up on my legs, looked at Rita working in the garden, and called out "Mama."  Then she screwed up her face, looked into the sky, and whined.  It was clear: she wanted Mama to help her go to sleep, because she was tired.  And as I write this, Helena Iara sleeps in the next room as Rita watches over her.

In grammatical terms, Helena used Mama as a vocative, a call to someone, just like I might say, "Hey, David" to my brother before making a comment or asking a question.  I don't think that Helena used the word as a signifier, as a sound that refers to a thing: I doubt that she even considers Rita (or me, or anyone) to be a thing, a substance with properties, let alone understands that words refer to things.  But she used the word.  She used it with purpose, with a plan.  And as Wittgenstein says, "In most (but not all) cases, we can say that the meaning of a word is its use in a language game."

Signification and meaning may come later, but for me, today is July 4 or July 14th, the arbitrary day we choose to call the one that matters.  Today, when she said "Mama", she was speaking.