Did she say stuffing?

My niece Ruby was nine months old for her first Christmas. My sister, Flannery, and Ruby came over for a Christmas Eve supper with me and my daughter, Rosie.

Rosie and I had a few Christmas traditions. We tried to visit relatives over Thanksgiving because we preferred to spend Christmas in our own home. This had the added benefit of avoiding the Christmas fights. We had Cornish game hens for dinner on Christmas Eve. We went out for Chinese food on Christmas Day. Some years we spent time with friends but we always spent a lot of quiet time together, just the two of us.

My sister had decided that she and Ruby would spend their first Christmas Day alone together so they had come over for Christmas Eve supper. I served stuffed game hens. We probably exchanged gifts that evening but I don't remember presents.

I remember the moments when we sat down to dinner. My daughter, my sister and my niece were like shimmering orbs around my table. I was aglow with my love for them and their love for me. I remember noting that my daughter was more vibrant than usual. I remember noting that Rosie loved having my sister and my niece join us. I loved Flannery and Ruby deeply but I found myself loving them just a little bit more that evening as I noted Rosie's joy to be with them. Sometimes we went to friends' homes for Christmas dinner but I think this was the first time Rosie and I had Christmas company. And what special guests! In my mind's eye, we had candlelight but I don't think we actually did. I think my memories glow because of love, not candlelight. I was happy, full of love, as I sat down to that Christmas Eve dinner with three people I loved so much.

Having a baby around is always bliss. Ruby was at a peak of perfect plumpness. I think of how many nativity paintings have a radiant light focussed on the Christ child. All babies glow like this for me and Ruby was alive with radiant joy. My daughter, now thirty two, still dazzles me with her radiance when I think of her. Come to think of it, all the people I love glow for me.

My sister, of course, was also in a bliss state. How could she be anything else when she had baby Ruby in her arms?

We had dressed up for this dinner. As I write this, I am really having a great time. In my mind's eye, I keep looking from Rosie to Flannery to Ruby, then back to Rosie, around and around, noting the radiance in each of these women as they sat around my table, loving them with all my heart. I had this experience at the time as well, looking loving at each of my beloveds around that table. Rosie, a high school freshman, was doing a spiky thing with mousse in her hair. She was wearing a brown velvet dress. Flannery was a picture perfect madonna, with her thick, blonde hair and red-lipsticked lips. And Ruby. Ruby wore red, a precious jewel in any color but she popped in red.

They were all beautiful. I loved and love all of them so much.

We began eating, all of us chattering happily. The meal was not very fancy. My big flourish had been to place a few tablespoons of stuffing in each of the three tiny birds. We joked about that stuffing. It was delicious but it seemed like such a lot of trouble for such a small return. Digging it out of the tiny birds for such a tiny reward. Two tablespoons, maybe three.  We talked about stuffing recipes. Flannery was partial to stuffing with chestnuts. I was partial to stuffing with walnuts. Rosie was fussy, sliding into her eating disorder but I didn't know that yet, liked her stuffing plain: bread and seasoning, no onions, no celery. The stuffing this night was plain one of my gifts to Rosie. We were all happy to have it the way Annie liked it. Stuffing, stuffing, stuffing. We had a lot to say about stuffing.

Which might explain what happened next. It was a Christmas miracle.

Flannery was feeding Ruby tiny bites of stuffing. Ruby had just begun to eat solid foods. She couldn't eat the poultry. She didn't like the cranberries. Ruby liked that stuffing.

As we laughed and chatted about all things stuffing, Flannery began to exclaim, "Look at Ruby! Look how she likes the stuffing!" We all gazed adoringly at our baby.

"Here," I said, "She can have my stuffing." And I scooped out my tiny portion of stuffing and put it on my sister's plate.

My sister kept feeding the baby stuffing. We were all rapt, joyfully watching Ruby gobble stuffing as fast as my sister could spoon it into her mouth.

"She can have my stuffing, too!" Rosie exclaimed. This was a miracle in itself. Rosie was fussy about sharing her food. She had never been willing to share food, not even when she was a baby herself. She was a little obsessive about it. When Rosie offered her stuffing to Ruby,  we all radiated a joyful vibration. It was so perfect that such a little thing could make us all so happy.

"Stuffing!" Ruby said.

Ruby was not yet talking. She and her mother communicated, of course, but we were not yet thinking of Ruby as someone who could talk.

"Did she just say stuffing?!" my sister cried out.

"Did she just say stuffing?!" my daughter cheered.

"She did, she did. She said stuffing. Ruby say it again. Stuffing. Say 'stuffing! She said stuffing. I know I heard it right."

We all tried to get her to say it again.

"Give her some more stuffing, maybe she'll say it then."

"She's already eaten all of it."

We dug around our poultry carcasses looking for more stuffing. The stuffing was all gone.

"It was not our imagination. That baby said stuffing."All three of us kept exclaiming the same things. We were so thrilled that the baby had finally said a comprehensible word and such a complex one. Stuffing is not a daily vocabulary word. We all nodded meaningfully back and forth, signaling to one another that our baby was a genius if her first word was stuffing.

My daughter's first word, at least the first one I understood, was Snuffleupagus.  She loved Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street. That's a very big first word. When her pediatrician asked me what her first word was, he said I had imagined that Snuffleupagus was her first word. I realize, in hindsight, that my baby must have been using lots of words before I got Snuffleupagus. I also learned that she rolled words together, making them sound different because she was learning not just language but how to use her vocal muscles to imitate the sound of my language. Once I figured out that babies roll their sounds together when first trying to say words, I could understand most babies sooner than their parents. I bet most babies talk much sooner than their parents realize because the parents are listening for how language sounds to them. Babies are experimenting on many levels as they learn to talk.

We had some holiday pie after the stuffing thrill died down. . Cranberry pear pie. Ruby got some smashed up pears, turning up her nose at the berries.

I love my daughter, my sister and my niece.