My morning walk with Toby, my German shepherd, started as usual: I sternly told him he shouldn’t be sniffing those nasty things in our path, and he politely lifted his gaze to indicate that he’d heard me and would take my warning into consideration. Then, with a hangdog look, he put his nose to the ground and went right back to what he’d been doing, sniffing left and right without the slightest change, while I walked beside him. I suffered another spasm of disapproval as he sank his nose into an old Kleenex someone had dropped. Littering is a bigger problem in Spain than in the United States. People do it indiscriminately—on the street, in parks, on nature trails, anywhere they happen to be with a cigarette butt or a candy wrapper to discard. Shame on them for dropping their trash, and shame on Toby for burying his nose in it.
My spasm must have traveled down the leash, because Toby again raised his gaze to meet mine, and his look as good as said, “Don’t I get to sniff freely without condemnation?”
“Do you have to?”
Again that look. “Isn’t it enough that I want to?”
“Please don’t unless you absolutely need to.”
“I’m a dog. I need to.”
He looked at me. I looked at him.
What were we really discussing? Get to, have to, want to, need to—not modal verbs exactly, but verbs signaling reasons. These are among the first words children use to assert themselves. Toby had never been so expressive before, resorting instead to tugging at his leash or barking from the end of it at a passing dog. But age was showing, and he was finally doing what people often tell frustrated children: Use your words. Toby was speaking with his eyes.
I thought then of a video a friend had sent a month or two earlier, of her son tasting ice cream for the first time. He was about a year old, sitting in his high chair with a bib on. I’ve watched it a number of times.
“Shall we try some ice cream?” his mum says.
The mother is out of the frame, but her hand with the spoon comes into sight. As the spoon comes closer, the little boy eyes it, already aware that something different is about to happen. He opens his mouth, not wide but cautiously, accepting the spoon with its dab of ice cream. He tastes it, purses his lips. His expression says, “What is this, and have I ever had it before?” You can almost see the decision taking shape on his face: This is worth investigating. The little boy is not speaking yet, but he can certainly give a good imitation. Signaling with his hand for more, he emits a sound that is unmistakably a command. “Brumnn.”
A second later, looking somewhat surprised at having to repeat himself, he issues his command again. “Brumnn!”
I watched him in the video take four tastes of ice cream. By the third and the fourth, I was laughing. It’s hard to convey how fast he advanced from interest to enthusiasm. Not exactly enthusiasm for ice cream. Enthusiasm for repeating the experiment. And each time, surprise. At the texture? The temperature? The sweetness? Or simply the sheer newness?
Still picturing the boy, I smiled on Toby. The morning was still. No wind, no one stirring that we could see. The birds, all chirping at first light, had quieted, like a team finished with the warm-up before a footrace. But the track was still clear; the day was waiting for the starter’s signal.
“Toby,” I wanted to say, “we are here, at the dawn of our day. Witnesses to the slow awakening of the world.”
But I didn’t say anything. What could I say? Toby already knew. How quickly the world begins, and how quickly it all passes.
