I am the same which spake, and the world was made,
and all things came by me.
D&C 38:3
I stutter.
It can get worse when I am tired. Or if I audition for a play. Sometimes in church settings. Stress, too.
Or none of these things at all.
My family says they do not hear it.
In the car we discuss the movie we have seen, a king trying to take words from inside him and pour them out his mouth and into his people. As we discuss the story of the king and the therapist and stammering and stuttering and I talk about the ways in which I am similar to and different from the king, the painter says, "The trouble, the problem, with you is that you don't stutter enough."
Do you have those moments when your understanding of English, of communion between humans, of myriad meanings and any sort of guessing as to another person's possible intent, flees, deserts you and you stare, empty; the most inner space which should be warm and whispering and teeming with thoughts and feelings and what you are planning to say next desolate and whistling as outside air blows frozen and unimpeded across your perfectly blank mind?
I looked at the painter, when he said that, from such a place. I could not for the life of me figure out his words.
Insufficient stuttering is not the trouble, the problem, with me.
I stutter. I stutter a lot.
That's not what he meant, of course. His meaning didn't match the words he used. What he meant is that he has lost his ability to grasp it, the stuttering, to pull up from his memory stumbling specimens for examination, to tease my speech apart and figure it out. There's no longer enough of it for him to grab hold. It is not gone; it is gone from him.
I know I do it. I am strategic. I make choices, mindfully breathing, picking and choosing from among thousands of words those least likely to trip me up, to knock me down. Still, as my sister says, at some point you're gonna have to face using words that begin with W. Like, for example, word. Like that. You may be able to think of a few more W words difficult to avoid. And then Y is tricky. L is nasty. My daughter's name begins with L. S can be a problem-- obvious difficulties there. Watch me take a careful breath before I tell you my name. Watch me stumble anyway. You will lean forward, tiny frown, tiny smile. "What's that? What was--I didn't catch--"
Watch me. Another breath. Second try will be much better. Or much, much worse.
Watch me do this all my life.
I'm just shaping the sound,
I'm just turning the syllables round.
Dipping my toe in the water
and watching you drown.
-Keane, Again and Again
I know I stutter because people misunderstand. I misstep, hit the first syllable of a word twice and people react to what they heard, repeat it; amused and/or annoyed that I have made a stupid and mildly funny joke, a broken pun, an annoying embroidery on a bit of conversation. They throw it back at me, ha, this is funny-dumb, you said a dumb-funny thing, ha. I have to look at them, have to say into their eyes, "No, I didn't say that. I stutter." Clatter, smash. You can hear that word go to pieces on the stones at the bottom of polite conversation. I stutter. Like a special parking permit. Allows me to stop this friendly flow of unexamined words in their tracks. Baby, nobody adult wants you to say I stutter when they have just tossed a casual, a thoughtless-- no-- an unconsidered slur on something you've said. Makes them, suddenly, nakedly, afraid they might actually, after all, secretly, be not so nice people. As they feared all along.
You should try it.
And the Lord said unto him,
Who hath made man's mouth?
or who maketh the dumb,
or deaf,
or the seeing,
or the blind?
have not I the Lord?
Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth,
and teach thee what thou shalt say.
-Exodus 4:11&12
A woman comes to me at church after I have taught a lesson. "You stutter," she announces without preamble or introductions (lucky for me), "you stutter and stutter and look at you! Just look at you!" I look at me. I do not know what she is talking about. Has she come up to me after class, made all this social effort in order to hand me an atta-boy award? "Look how it doesn't stop you, how you think you can just talk anyway." She goes on, flows and gushes on, words pouring unbroken and pure from her so I have not time to perceive, let alone give form to the aghast thoughts rising and fluttering in masses inside my head. "My daughter stutters and she will not speak. Will not. I can't get her to speak even with us, even with people who don't care. She just has stopped talking and I just wish," she's holding on to my arm, crying a little and twisting it, "that she could have heard you give this lovely lesson and stutter!"
I sift through words in order to speak. I re-order. I substitute. It's a habit. I listen. I think. I will take your sentence apart and put it back together.
...will not speak...even with people who don't care.
She doesn't mean this thing she's said, exactly.
She means her daughter will no longer speak; of course, she must have once spoken. Will no longer speak even with people who do care. People who do care about this girl enough to want her words limping and crippled, who still care so much for her they want her insides to show on the outside. People willing to trade caring about the form and precision and beauty of spoken words (because they do care, they do, we all care, observe our love affair with the British accent) for a share in this girl's thoughts and opinions and bad jokes, however marred, however fragmented.
...you think you can just talk anyway.
It is a new world this nice, concerned and moved Mormon lady opens to me. One I had not before considered. I might, in my life, have chosen a different world. I might have chosen silence.
Then I said, Woe is Me!
for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
for mine eyes have seen the King,
the Lord of hosts.
Then flew one of the seraphims unto me,
having a live coal in his hand,
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:
And he laid it upon my mouth,
and said
Lo, this hath touched thy lips;
and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin is purged.
Isaiah 6:5-7
I stutter. And I talk too much.
I talk all the time. Incessantly. About everything. Need something said? I work for free. And I never shy away from anything except asking people questions about their lives. That's yucky, but the rest of spoken everything is free game. Ask me a question. My response may or may not include a long and detailed story about my life, ruminations on word origins and connotative meanings, digressions into the causes of the Battle of Hastings and speculations as to its effect on fast food in America and some pointed observations on modern Mormon mores. If you can keep your wits about you and your focus sharp (if you can stay awake) you will see all those words will be my answer to your question. Sometimes a friend will ask a question innocently and unguardedly and I will take a breath and there's this suspended moment when we look at each other and then I say, "Do you really want this answer? Or shall I say, 'It was fine' ?" and they think about it. Some go one way, some go another.
I talk.
To people. All, all, all the time.
Hands, face, body, words, words, words.
I'm the one who says, "That's a cheap answer. That's easy to say."
The book club girl who says, "Huh. I don't think it means that at all. And by the way I didn't like this book."
The one who says, "Wait a minute-- what did you just say?"
The one who says, "What could that possibly mean? What on earth do you think they thought they were saying?"
I say, "Wait, I don't understand. You lost me. What are you talking about?"
"What do you mean," I say, "Why?" "How so?" "And is that true? Do you think that's true?"
My friend says, stopped in his tracks, caught short by some query, "Man, you are just the one to stick people with tough questions, aren't you?" I have stuck him by asking him to explain why he chose those words he has just used.
Look how it doesn't stop you, how you think you can just talk anyway.
But it might have been different. This had simply never occurred to me.
And behold, the glory of the Lord was upon Moses,
so that Moses stood in the presence of God,
and talked with him face to face.
And the Lord God said unto Moses,
For mine own purpose have I made these things.
Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me.
And by the word of my power have I created them...
-Moses 1:31&32
Lately I am plagued by people running from their own words. People who claim not to have meant what they said, who cast from themselves the words of their own making like so many bastard children. Sorry, Son, whatever it was in my head that I meant at the time I certainly never meant to make you. Distancing themselves as if these things out of their mouths were not things made, chosen, but things that came upon them in some sort of fit, outside their control, like storm squalls or tax law.
That was said in anger, it was because I was desperate, I don't know why you feel this way about what I said, I'm not sure I want to be held to those words, just because I said it he thinks I meant it, she is holding me to what I said but---
but
but
I want to not be held
to,
by,
these words
I have made.
they're only words they're only words they're only words
DAMN IT, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself;
and though the heavens and the earth pass away,
my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled,
whether by mine own voice, or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.
-D&C 1:38
Begin picking words, selecting between them, at about the age of three. Take careful breaths. Listen. Otherwise, if I cannot get some control of this thing outside my control, I will have to spend more time with the school speech pathologist. We met, the pathologist and I, when I was in third grade. He was the first ever adult I realized was unable to keep up his end of a conversation. I tried to speak very carefully around my teachers after that so as to minimize therapy and contact. Breathe. Think about all the words that do not begin with W, L, S, Y...
I would say that I'm sorry if it would do any good
But to never regret means you have to forget
and I don't think that I could.
Don't say words you don't mean,
When I'm gone please speak well of me.
-The Weepies, Please Speak Well of Me
It's a story we tell, a world we make and we make it all out of words. What do I know of you? Your dress, your countenance, your movements, your deeds, your words. Nuances of dress may elude you, your face is what you wore into the world, all we can do to be known is move our limbs and shape the air that passes from our lungs. Marks on paper, movements through time and space, vibrations of air across vocal cords. Of such tiny stuff are our whole selves made, as far as concerns others and their knowing of us. How to connect, ever, worlds without end, except through our saying? And then, that anyone would desire, embrace, pursue, seek to disown their words? To be separated, divided, from their own making of meaning?
How terrifying.
Not that we wouldn't take back. Not that we wouldn't regret. Not that there's no place in the world for an editor (heaven knows). Not that anyone can get it right.
It's a question of ownership.
Not much for conversation
I still find need to pray
Sometimes I get tired of walking
Through these ordinary days
If nothing else I get to see you
Even if we never speak
The harm of words is sometimes
We don't quite know
What they really mean
-Jars of Clay, Ordinary Days
In the beginning was the Word.
And,
the Word was God.
My niece is small, three years old. Pretty, blond, a good girl. Earnest. Smart. She began stuttering one day. Out of the blue. Fully developed inability to get sounds out.
Why?
And how you gonna get along without W words, baby?
She tries. Deliberately. Carefully. Breathes. Tries. Heartbreaking to watch.
One day, playing with her cousins, she breaks. Cries, stops speaking. Withdraws.
...even with people who don't care.
Her mother is good, a good mama. We have spoken, counseled, she is sensible, not making too great a fuss, exerting any sort of pressure or weight, we know this is common, will probably not last, is not the end of the world.
Only, of course, it might be. It might be the end of that world in which this little girl speaks freely.
Look at you...how you think you can just talk anyway.
Her momma tries to comfort a despair too huge for only three years of living. "Maybe, maybe tonight we can pray to Jesus and He can start to take this away, to help you." Words said in hope, to push away pain. The little girl grasps them, the words, takes them, makes them real. She goes immediately, prays. By herself. Makes words and gives them to God and no one hears those words but God. We will not know if she had to chose between tricky words and the faithful friends. She has not stuttered since that conversation with the God she loves and trusts, to whom she has spoken.
But remember that all my judgments are not given unto men;
and as the words have gone forth out of my mouth even so shall they be fulfilled,
that the first shall be last,
and that the last shall be first in all things
whatsoever I have created by the word of my power,
which is the power of my spirit.
D&C 29:30
Never occurred to me, that there might have been a different world.
In the movie the king makes his speech. "Breathe," says his therapist, just before the terrible moment, the crisis. And after, after the words have come out and not come out, after the great and terrible, limping success, the therapist tells the king he did stumble on some of the W's. He had to leave those in, the king says, had to put them there so the people would know it was him.
I stutter. You know it's me.
For it is my voice which speaketh them unto you;
for they are given by my spirit unto you,
and by my power you can read them one to another;
and save it were by my power you could not have them;
Wherefore you can testify that you have heard my voice,
and know my words.
D&C 18:35&36
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