Pivotal moments

Yet somewhere in that chaos, our brains begin to map meaning. A mother’s coo repeats often enough that it becomes familiar; a father’s laugh becomes music we recognise. Slowly, sound starts to segment into patterns, and patterns into possibilities.

From babble to brilliance, we experiment, testing the edges of sound like sculptors of air. “Ma,” “ba,” “da”, nonsense at first, but thrilling nonsense. Then, one day, a sound lands. It earns a smile, a response, a hug, and language begins to bloom.