Over time, I had come to grasp that the chief principle of their grammar is whether a thing to them is possessed of an animating soul. How they determine this is outlandish to our way of thinking, so profligate are they in giving out souls to all manner of things. A canoe paddle is animate, because it causes something else to move. Even a humble onion has, in their view, a soul, since it causes action—pulling tears from the eyes. Yet as I had begun to see this strange, incarnate world through Caleb’s eyes, my grammar had much improved, and it pained me to hear father expose himself with his
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