Heritage.

"What's his name?" I asked of Felicia, while her son careened around the room, gleefully walloping people's legs with the latex gloves Dr. Babb had blown up for him.
"Artero," she answered with a smile.
"That's beautiful. Is it a family name?"
"No, we chose it."
Artero zoomed past me, a streak of orange and khaki, dusky skin and enormous coffee-black eyes. He'll grow into his name.
His mother is the paragon of a joyous, happy Navajo woman, no matter how it sounds to say it. If it were a hundred years earlier and she were forty years older, she would be the wise woman of her tribe, wreathed in smile wrinkles, leathered by sunshine.
"He's only allowed to speak English at school," Felicia explained to Stephanie and Nancy. "But at home he's only allowed to speak Navajo."
"Your husband is Navajo too?"
"Yes." Felicia monitored Artero, now busy ripping up and down the hallway outside and terrorizing all who passed with a hop and a roar, waving his makeshift balloons menacingly.
"He is so cute," Nancy crooned.
"We speak Navajo at family parties, too, for the little ones," Felicia continued. "My mom and dad taught me and my brothers how to speak it, and now we're teaching our children."
How rich and beautiful, I thought. Heritage.
It's a word I don't know much about. My heritage rests on the shores of old Britannia. My ancestors' language is now obsolete, archaic, a dim memory. Their way of life is now locked inside a book or two or ten thousand, worn thin and inaccurate with retelling.
This child has it... heritage. The most difficult and indecipherable language in the world will be at his command, will be second nature to him. Artero will always know who he is, where he came from, and how to be proud of his ancestry.
He is so very lucky.