Vivian propped her chin on her hands and looked down into the grass. A ladybug was making her way between the green blades. Vivian reached down and gently nudged the insect with her finger. The ladybug didn’t appear to notice. Vivian giggled and rolled over onto her back. The ladybug might have noticed if her finger was ladybug-sized. But little girl-sized? No.

“What are you laughing about?” Vivian’s mother was on her knees, diligently pruning the rosebushes nearby.

“My fingers.” Vivian held up her hands and regarded her fingers closely. Such strange, long, tentacle-y things. She wiggled them. “How do I know they’re fingers?”

Her mother shrugged. “How do you know they’re not?”

Vivian frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re not fingers, after all. Maybe they’re elbows.”

“Maybe you overanalyze things,” Mother replied.

“I can’t help it, words are interesting. What if they weren’t called fingers, they were called something else? Would that change my fingers? Would it change how I used them?”

“Other mothers have daughters who want to talk about ponies and princesses,” Mother chuckled.

“What if ponies and princesses were called zounds and zebras?”

“They’d still be the same thing, Vivian.”

She rolled her head around to look at her mother. “How do you know?”

“These, for instance. What I’m holding. What are they?”

“Pruning shears.”

Mother shook her head. “‘Pruning shears’ is a label, words we use to mean something. You should never confuse a label with what it stands for.”

“But they really are pruning shears.”

Mother sat down cross-legged besides Vivian with the shears. “Give me your hand, little one.” She fit her daughter’s fingers into the handles of the tool, motioning them open and closed. Then she held the shears and traced Vivian’s fingers along the blunt side of the blade. Finally, she helped Vivian clip an errant stem from the rosebush. “Now. Describe them again.”

Vivian wrinkled her nose. “Heavy steel clippie thingy that makes a shhk! noise and cuts off roses.”

Mother laughed. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think there’s a word that fits.”

“Now try describing what pruning shears are without words.”

Vivian picked up the shears and lopped off a leaf. “That was easy,” she observed.

Mother smiled. “See? ‘Pruning shears’ is just a few mouth noises we make when we want someone to think of pruning shears. Words are labels.”

“I like when you explain things like this, Mother.”

Her mother leaned over and chucked her gently on the chin. “There’s no explanation for how I feel about you, little one. You’re indescribable.”

Vivian hugged her mother. “So are you.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.