What Lullabies Teach Us About Language

This is, What Doesn't Translate, a column by Kristin Wong about why language matters—and what it says about who we are.

If I hear one more beep, I’ll scream. I’m sitting in a hospital room next to my new baby, who is sound asleep in a plastic bassinet. The room is furnished with a sleeper sofa and reclining glider for nursing; it boasts a view of the San Gabriel Mountains—unexpectedly charming if you can ignore the computers that beep all day long. These sounds are good, they let the nurses know when the baby’s oxygen levels are too low or his heart rate is too high. But sometimes the beeps happen because a wire has accidentally been bumped. Or because the computer is doing weird computer things. And sometimes, a nurse tells me, the beeps happen for no reason at all. “Well, that’s reassuring,” I think to myself. My husband is downstairs in the cafeteria getting lunch—it’s just me and the baby and the beeps, which are starting to sound aggressive. “Beep. Beep. You’re stuck here. Beep. Beep. Hope you like hospital food. Beep. Beep. BEEP!”

Our son was born a month early, and his little lungs need help breathing on their own. The nurses have put tubes in his nose. Taped wires to his chest and belly. When we change his diaper, he cries like a little pterodactyl. For a while, it feels like I’m visiting someone else’s kid. Maybe because the moment he was pulled from my body, he was taken to the NICU, and a doctor told me to rest and try not to worry about it. He might be here for a little while. I should go home and sleep. “Think of it as the world’s most expensive childcare,” she said. But I didn’t want childcare—I wanted to be with my son. I wanted to take him home.

In the NICU, everything I did felt wrong. When I nursed him, my shoulders were too tense. When I changed his diaper, I didn’t check the ruffles. I couldn’t even comfort him the right way. “Don’t pat,” a nurse suggested, because it’s too stimulating for a newborn. “Just put your hand on him,” she said, “like this.” She placed her gentle palm on his soft, sleeping head, and, sure enough, my son stilled. With so much care from others, what could I possibly offer? I wasn’t sure how to be a mother. All I could think to do, when the nurses would leave the room, was sing to him.

*

My mother and I used to sing a song together. Before bed, we’d lie on the itchy carpet of our apartment floor and sing to the ceiling, “Pang yau loy ba, pang yau loy ba . . . ” Friends, come gather, friends come gather. Sometimes we’d sing into a plastic tape recorder that I carried everywhere. I’d mash the small yellow microphone into my face then press it into hers. “Daai gaa yat tsai dou hoi bin.” Together we gather at the beach. We’d sing the whole song twice, and at the end of the second round, we’d finish with a dramatic “Da dum da dum!”—which meant it was time for bed. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night, roll over, and see her sleeping, and I’d turn on the tape recorder, falling back to sleep to the sound of our voices pressed against my ear. “Da dum da dum!” Then giggles.

All I could think to do, when the nurses would leave the room, was sing to him.

But over the years, I lost the tape—and, along with it, the lullaby we used to sing. I can recall the melody but only some of the lyrics, and I’m not entirely sure what they mean or even where they belong. The words were in Cantonese, a language I don’t speak much anymore.

I was in my second trimester when I read about a study that claimed babies can remember songs from the womb. Their baby brain signals perk up when they hear those songs, even months later. It’s like they remember. Another study claimed that lullabies help babies pick up language faster too. They process the sounds and the emotions behind them, which also helps create a bond with the people singing. The words aren’t that important—it’s the act of singing that matters. One researcher called it an “honest signal of attention that would basically tell the infant, ‘Yep, I’m here; I’m looking after you; everything’s cool.’”

Lullabies have universal appeal. Babies feel relaxed when they hear lullabies in unfamiliar and foreign languages. (Which, I guess, all languages are when you don’t speak them.) Psychologist Samuel Mehr wondered, “Is this just because they’ve experienced their parents’ singing before and know it means they’re safe and secure? Or is there also something universal about lullabies that produces these effects, independently of experience?” Maybe it’s both. Lullabies, it seems, are a way of telling your children that you love them before they understand the words I love you. In that way, lullabies are like a language of their own.

When I learned all of this during my pregnancy, I’d stand in front of the bathroom mirror and slather lotion over my big, stretched belly and sing, “Pang yau loy ba, pang yao loy ba . . .” I could hear it: my small chipmunk vocals and my mom’s deep and soothing voice. Even though my memory of us singing was so clear—nuzzling into my mom’s side, resting my head on her bony arm—the words were somehow still a blur. I couldn’t remember so many of them, and I didn’t know the meaning of the words I could remember. I wanted to sing this childhood lullaby to my son. A way to say “I love you,” the way my mother said it to me.

*

When the nurses leave the room, I put my face up to my son’s bassinet and sing the song I hummed while he was in the womb—quiet enough so that it was between the two of us, loud enough to drown out the beeps. “Ting san, look soy . . . something something.” It isn’t fair. He deserves to know the words. But my Cantonese is gone, and I feel like all I have for him is some jumbled mess of sounds from my unreliable brain. Sitting in the dark with the machines beeping in the background, I wonder if I should call my mother. It should be easy to ask her about this. Hey, remember that song? I would say. The one we sang in that apartment in Alief when I was little? I loved it so much. And I love you. And, Mom, I miss you. But it isn’t that easy. Asking would require digging up the past. My thumb hovers over her number on the screen, but I open my music app instead. “Across the Universe” belts out of my shitty phone speakers and I hunch over his bed to watch him sleep. For now, this will have to do.

Lullabies aren’t just soothing for the recipient. They also calm the person singing them. Writer Jenny Marder makes the case that lullabies are a way for mothers to express their own fears and anxieties, which explains why so many of them are grim. One study confirmed that “lullabies soothe both moms and babies simultaneously.” Was I singing to my son as a way to soothe myself? Was my mother trying to soothe herself all those years ago? Her life was different then—a single mother still learning the language and the customs of a country she didn’t grow up in, working all around the clock. We don’t talk about it much.

My mom says the reason we don’t talk about these things is cultural. She says that Chinese people don’t talk about memories because talking about the past is almost like inviting it to come back and haunt you. Over the years, she’s shared stories of our family’s history—sagas of loss and hardship—but I keep coming back to that simple memory of the first song we sang together. Lullabies have been called a “cultural memory transmitter,” a way of keeping histories alive through songs passed on to children. A way of talking about the past without really talking about the past. I’ve come to understand that respecting my mother’s fears is also a way of saying “I love you.” Silence can be a lullaby in its own right.

*

Back in the NICU, I try to google the song. I type the words I can remember, but nothing shows up. I spend some time on YouTube, watching other Cantonese nursery rhymes. Nothing. There is no trace the song ever existed, no history of it, no recording. The only proof I have that it’s real is my mother. I keep singing anyway, remembering that it’s less about the words and more about letting my son know that I’m here. I’m looking after him. Everything is cool.

Was I singing to my son as a way to soothe myself? 

After a week in the hospital—a week of taking the elevator to the eighth floor, a week of listening to machines beeping, a week of eating packaged Corn Nuts from the cafeteria—it starts to feel like our son is never coming home. I know this isn’t true. The nurses tell me it isn’t true. He just needs a bit more time. He’s doing great, they say; his little lungs just need to grow. I spend the days reminding myself of this, like a mantra.

On what is supposed to be our son’s discharge day, the doctor runs some tests. Then he brings us over to his desk, swivels his computer screen, and points to some numbers. “He still needs more time,” the doctor says. The room gets smaller and smaller. My hands crawl through my scalp and I begin to yank at my hair until I finally crumble into a crying mess. A nurse hands me a tissue that disintegrates into my fist, and I excuse myself because my behavior is frightening everyone. Up until this point, I’ve only been optimistic, cracking jokes. But my optimism has reached a boiling point. The numbers make sense. They’re logical. It’s logical to keep him here. But there’s logic and then there’s feeling, and despite all logic, it feels like we’re stuck here. Even then, I knew there would be a part of myself that would always be trapped in that room.

“How is he?” my mom asks over the phone one morning. My husband and I are in the NICU just before the sun is up. This is the easy part of the day. It’s the evenings, when we go home and leave him here, that are starting to destroy me. He’s great, I whisper, trying not to wake him up, even though the nurses tell me he likes the noise. We still don’t know when he’s coming home. I keep the part about breaking down in front of the doctor to myself. Instead, I say, “He’s growing.” “Hang in there,” my mom says. “And send me some pictures!”

I mention that I’ve been trying to sing to him. I bring it up casually, like I’m telling her about the latest season of Succession. Just a little small talk. Then, I go for it: “Do you remember the song we used to sing together? ‘Pang yau loy ba, pang yau loy ba,’” I sing, humming the rest of the melody. “Oh, yeah,” my mother says, “I remember.” Then she sings the next line, jogging her own memory of it. “That’s the one,” I say, still treading carefully. “What’s the rest of it?” I ask. “And what does it mean? Where did it come from?” It wasn’t something she made up, she tells me. “I remember hearing it as a kid, but, you know, I have no idea where it came from.” She sings the next few lines. Friends come, friends come . . . together we gather at the beach. “Tsing san luk seoi.” Green mountains, clear water. “Bak wan, yew yat.” White clouds, a beautiful day. Hearing her sing even these small bits of our song is comforting. I can feel my own heart rate dropping. Even the beeping has softened.As it turns out, I’ve been singing a lot of it all wrong. Some of the lines I remembered were out of place. Some of the words I remembered didn’t exist. The two of us hum it together over the phone. I sing the parts I can recall, and she corrects me and translates what I mean to say. My mom tells me what it all means: It’s a story of a perfect day. I’m brought back to the two of us lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Singing and giggling. “Da dum da dum!” Just like there is a part of me that will always be stuck in the hospital room, there is a part of me that will always be four years old, singing on the itchy carpet, nuzzled up against my mother.

We hang up the phone and the sun starts to rise. I open the windows so my son can see the tsing san, the clear mountains. I’m not sure how much newborns can really see, but if nothing else, it makes the room brighter. I sing the lullaby to him the right way. With the right words. There’s no way of knowing if he recognizes any of it, but it’s my way of saying “I love you.” My way of connecting him to my mother and to his Cantonese heritage, however lost it may seem. It’s my way of saying it’s going to be okay. That everything is fine, and though the world is a tough and scary place, he’ll be coming home with us soon and this will all be a blip in our memory, like the doctors keep telling us.

I take a picture of him sleeping in his plastic bassinet. He’s wrapped up like a burrito in a swaddle I’ve brought from home, hoping the smell will comfort him. His eyes are open and curious and full of light. He’s looking right at me. Can he see my face? Does he know I’m his mom? For now, the computers are quiet, and I send the photo to my own mom: “Almost home.”

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