Last weekend, I attended a country-themed fall festival with my husband and my sons, Max and Charlie. We enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather as well as bouncy castles, corndogs, and live music. After a couple of hours of expended energy, Charlie (who’s three) and I needed some downtime, so we set up a blanket on the lawn, sat down amid pumpkins and bales of hay, and listened to the band.

Led by a talented guitarist/vocalist, they covered a wide array of songs from a diverse group of artists. With a charming country twang, they played Janis Joplin, Fleetwood Mac, Taylor Swift, U2, and everything in between. Around twenty minutes passed, and dusk was starting to set, so we decided to pack it in.

Then the band came out with “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel. And for whatever reason, Charlie was driven to get up and dance. He bopped his head around and hopped from one foot to the other, trying to catch the rhythm. He spun in circles, his arms outstretched. He flailed. He dropped to the ground and rolled around for a while. He was totally free and unselfconscious.

As I watched him dance, I couldn’t help but beam. I was so happy that he could experience that kind of natural communion with music. That he could move his body in just the way he intended to. And that he could be exactly whom he was in that moment.

When I got home, l reflected on the experience. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t quite find the words to express that feeling of joy. I lamented the limits of the English language. I remembered learning that the Ancient Greeks identified and named (at least) five different types of love:

Eros: Romantic or passionate love.
Philia: Deep friendship.
Agape: Altruistic or selfless love.
Pragma: Love based on convenience.
Philautia: Self-love.

This nuanced understanding of the idea of love rings true. There is surely some overlap between, for instance, a football fan’s love of the game and a pet owner’s love for their dog. But the Greeks intuited that there’s enough of a gulf between those forms of love to justify separate terms.

In a similar vein, I thought about the German language, which is rich and incredibly expressive. In German, there’s a word for everything—no matter how obscure or esoteric.

Many of these words, which have no direct English translation, are amusing. Others reveal a deep understanding of the human condition. Schadenfreude, as many people know, is the feeling of pleasure derived from other people’s pain. Here are some lesser-known examples:

Verschlimmbessern: The act of making something worse by trying to improve it.
Fernweh: Farsickness. The opposite of homesickness, it is the yearning for distant places and new horizons.
Handschuhschneeballwerfer: A gloved snowball thrower. This term, as opposed to one who would throw a snowball with bare hands, refers to a wimp.
Dreikäsehoch: Three cheese high. This is an expression for a small child who is only as tall as three wheels of cheese stacked on top of each other.

There are countless more, but these words show the incredible specificity of the German language.

*Handschuhschneeballwerfer*: A gloved snowball thrower.

Sitting on the blanket and watching my son dance, I lamented the limits of the English language. I was overcome by emotion, but words failed. For Charlie, this was just a fleeting moment in time. But for me, it had lasting resonance.

Maybe I need a better vocabulary. Maybe I should learn German or Greek or some other language.

Or maybe, like so much of parenting and life, the feeling can’t be neatly articulated by even the most sophisticated polyglot. And it was simply pure, unadulterated love for my little Dreikäsehoch.

Trying to Make Some Sense of it All: Contending with the Limits of the English Language at a Fall Country Festival

The World She Edited: Part One

A Comment on Cohesiveness