Years after my mother’s death, I find an old cache of birthday and holiday cards. They sit on top of a basket of my old Beanie Babies, which for some reason, have remained in a corner of my parents’ bedroom. I’d forgotten that my parents had nicknames for one another—my mother was the general of the household and my father was the president. Much of their relationship was antagonistic flirtation. There was something between the two of them that of course must have worked.
In one card, the occasion unclear, my father wrote to my mother:
To the General:
Let me sleep in a little while longer.
Love,
The President
It hadn’t occurred to me before seeing this card that English might be the language of their love, that their relationship functioned this way, that it never required any translation.