The baby's first word is milk. Of course, it is. She's hungry, after all. Her little fist clenches and unclenches to the obvious delight of her Momma.

Those little fists snag Momma's brown curls, always a bit tangled, and Momma says ouch, pointing her index fingers together.

The baby is in a little onesie, feet kicking and hands exploring, with a gummy smile. While the baby pulls herself along on her belly, much like the Very Hungry Caterpillar in that board book the baby will love for years to come, Momma gives the baby a special word, "I love you." Her thumb and index finger and pinky are pointed up, while her middle and ring fingers are pointed down.

Momma tells stories with her hands, much to the toddler's fascination. Momma points to the mouse who hides a strawberry from a big, hungry bear and traces the toddler's finger across the silver scales of a rainbow fish who will give all those scales away. The toddler's mind is limited, still developing, but rapidly, and the more colors and pictures she sees as Momma turns the pages, the more a world of stories opens up.

The toddler knows more words now. She can say dog, patting her knee, and kitty, mimicking the whiskers that Bandit has. She can say Daddy, an outstretched hand with her thumb against her forehead, and she can say Momma, with an outstretched hand and a thumb against her chin, and she can say "I love you" back, when Momma holds up her pinky and thumb and index finger, leaving the other two down.

The toddler never wonders if Momma wishes she could hear her baby gurgles and toddler babbles. She doesn't understand yet. She thinks it's normal, normal to talk with your hands.

Baby turns to toddler and toddler turns to kindergartner. In kindergarten, nobody talks with their hands. The kindergartner sucks her thumb and doesn't talk much at all. Till Momma talks to her about being a big girl, and then she stops sucking her thumb abruptly, stubborn as she is.

Because she is a big girl now. She can form simple sentences, with her mouth and with her hands. She’s hungry, she says, and pulls a cupped hand down her chest. She’s thirsty, and she drags a finger across her throat. She always points at herself, because of course, the whole universe is hers, it all revolves around her.

Grandpa and Grandma say she's very intelligent. She just likes to explore, and explore. Much like that little boy that journeys to where the wild things are, except she can’t put those wild things to pages yet.

Momma wants to teach the big girl at home now and allows the girl a chance at the computer. A chance at creating adventures, putting wild things to pages. Her first adventure is choppy, with lots of stock photos, and a rat in the kitchen. But Momma loves it, and the girl creates adventures, especially unfinished ones, almost every day.

Now Momma teaches the girl true stories, about men who went sailing with no destination, about inventions that could fly, about gruesome knives that plunge into necks of royalty, about a woman arrested for sitting on a bus. So, so many stories, with a myriad of characters, but too few that talked with their hands.

The big girl wonders now if Momma is sorry that she can’t hear the girl tell her stories.

In middle school, the girl watches the fascination people have when she talks with her hands. The lady in the supermarket who stares unabashedly, the children who talk gibberish in their pretending, the teammates and travelmates who ask about talking with their own hands, and learn stumbling.

How rare it is for her to have friends that can talk with their hands, too. Yet when they come around, they like to trick the others. In Mexico, the girl’s friend replaces one word with the word “constipation”, and by God, was that funny… Now the girl wonders if that boy they taught ever learned the right word for truck.

Momma is patient with all the people who talk very slow and don’t know many words. The girl supposes it’s been like this for all Momma’s life, but the thoughts come often: is it lonely to only talk with your hands?

The girl isn’t lonely, and her head is always up in space with the stories and the characters she holds dear. Her own life is becoming like a storybook, like all her favorites in The Babysitter’s Club, a series in which Grandma has every single book. Momma used to read those books too.

The girl hates the word “young woman,” and hopes someday they’ll come up with a better way to talk about high-school-aged girls. For now, it’ll have to do.

High school is hard, and the young woman knows that. No amount of stories could have prepared her for what the young woman could call “the depths of despair,” but she knows that’s just too cliche for her taste. All she knows is that these depths hurt and break the skin. Yet as much as she feels it, she’s not alone, because Momma is always there with her thumb and pinky and index finger pointed up, “I love you.”

The young woman’s eyes are opened wide when Momma combats the pastor, who cannot integrate new kinds of people into his Sunday services. The young woman will never understand how difficult it is for Momma to only talk with her hands, but she knows now that Momma isn’t lonely, not one bit.

The people and culture that Momma is surrounded by are rich, with loving people who translate words and with silly children’s shows, all for people who can only talk with their hands. Momma and these others tell stories so differently than the young woman does, with bubbling lips and eyes half-shut, hands swirling and reaching big and wide, like a whirlpool that sucks you deep down, down, down, into the world they know.

The young woman has never heard or told a story that captures that whirlpool just quite right, and she wonders if she ever will.

Big girl turns to young woman, and young woman turns to woman. Maybe. The woman thinks she’s maybe still a young woman. After all, she’s only eighteen. Every day the world opens up more and more with new adventures, and she doesn’t see Momma every day anymore. She thinks about Momma all the time, and there’s always someone new who doesn’t know that the woman can talk with her hands. The woman has done her research and has asked Momma so many questions, and knows that no one should feel sorry for Momma.

Because nothing will ever quite compare to a toddler learning to talk with her hands, to teaching friends silly words, to a whirlpool of stories, to the feeling when the woman sees Momma over video call and they can both say “I love you,” with their middle and ring fingers pointed down, and index fingers and thumbs and pinkies pointed up.

Blood from a bruised nose

Running across her bottom lip

Dripping crimson off her chin like

A leaky faucet.

The white lace sleeves collect

The stream like a blood bank

As her varnished eyes sweep the room

Hawklike.

God, it could have been so flawless

Her love at the end of the aisle

And her in an ivory A-line treading across

Blushing petals.

Yet perhaps not all things are meant to be

She knows now as the crazed eyes of

Her future/not-future mother in law

Are wide open.

She is dead with the bride's heel

Still caught in her jugular

But it's finally stopped spurting blood

On the altar.

It had to be done, she thought

Her fiancé's mother was certifiably

Ill in the head, but the bride may be

As well.

The church itself was speechless

Christ on his crucifix petrified

As she held the dead woman's gun against

Her own temple.

Bang.

My therapist tells me that my brain is different than most people's. She says that it sees things differently, bigger. But bigger isn't always better.

Most of the obstacles in my life come from my brain. Seeing the bigger picture, seeing what everyone's thinking (even if it's not real), seeing words and phrases all in my own imagination. I'm afraid of most things and most things produce melancholy for me. That's why I take psychiatric medications.

Recently when I've been lost in thought, hating the way I think, the way my brain works, I daydream, vividly, about reaching into my skull with clawlike fingers and removing the brain. I suppose the brain isn't actually pink like in most picture books. But I'll imagine it is in the daydream, and it's stained with blood. Then I'll set the brain, my brain, on the table and point a gun at it (which makes no sense, I'm too chicken to hold a gun), and shoot it. BANG. Because I don't want it. I don't want this brain.

It holds too much. Too, too much.

The medication helps me overcome it. My therapist helps me overcome it. But it seems to be a much harder journey than I anticipated. An uphill struggle. Perhaps success will come. Perhaps someday I'll measure my success by overcoming the mountainous obstacle that my brain seems to be (really, it's only three pounds or something, but it seems so much larger now). And if that day comes, until that day comes (I have to be positive-- my therapist says so), I'll keep breathing and lightening the load on my brain. Till the day where I don't believe I have to shoot it to relieve the pressure.