Day 305: Words Part II

Words.

Many of my oldest and most vivid memories revolve around them. Whether they were the address that I repeatedly copied into my home-school kindergarten textbook, or the basic French vocabulary words that my mom wrote on loose leaf and we illustrated and hung like a border around the walls of our playroom, it seems that words have always been a part of my psyche.

My wobbly hand shaping letters and numbers with a dull pencil … 109 Riverside Drive…

A sloppy sun with my mom's neat, cheery printing in the corner … le soleil.

Coloring the computer-printed banners Grandma brought with her when she came to stay over for a week or two every couple of years … Welcome Home, Mom and Baby.

I remember the first time I used written words to change my reality. It was afternoon nap time and our creaky old house was the kind of silent that only those with sleeping babies know. Apprehensive about making noise, but still annoyed at having to take a nap at the very grown-up age of 4 or 5, I secretly penciled my first sentence on crumpled loose leaf: "Why do I hat to go to bed." Then I tiptoed out of my room to give it to my mother.

She graciously accepted my magnum opus and carefully corrected my spelling and grammar.

But I didn't have to go back to bed.

I never forgot that lesson.

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I also remember the first time I said my husband's name.

Of course, I didn't know it was his at the time.

I was ten years old and wouldn't lay eyes on the man for almost another decade.

It was after an evening service at church. My family had just started attending there, and we were still getting to know the congregation. After sitting primly through the sermon, we kids had whooped it up – wading in the icy stream behind the building and throwing fallen apples at each other in the deepening twilight. I remember that the light in our crowded minivan glowed orange, then faded with the snaps and clicks of everyone putting on their seatbelts.

My father asked us if we remembered meeting someone part of whose name meant "no" in Old English. He meant René – one of the parishioners he'd hired to work with him at his shop. But I remembered another name.

Nathan.

When I said it, the word tasted strange in my mouth. Thick, like someone stirring cookie dough or kneading bread.

My dad agreed that the name "Nathan" also fit his criteria. As I listened to him explain that "nay" was another way of saying "no", I had no idea that one day I would share my life with a man named Nathan.

Although I mulled over many names of people I met in the coming months and often pored through baby name books in search of unusual and exotic names for my pets, stuffed animals, and fictional characters (I once had a hamster named Marcellus), that memory is the only one I've retained of the first time I've ever said someone's name.  

But that doesn't mean that other names don't have particular associations.

Dave is a deep, quivering half-sound, like a vibrating guitar string.

James sounds like wind chimes or Christmas bells – clear and infinite.

Jane sounds like bells ringing too, but tinnier, more like a doorbell or a phone.

Laura is also a bell, but a rich, single peal instead of several smaller ones.

Alice is a colour – sky blue.

Not all names and words hold strong associations for me. For those that do, I'm influenced by the physical shapes of the letters themselves, by a word or name's resemblance to other words, by a word's resemblance to the sound that it makes, and by the person or circumstances that I associate a name or word with. Sometimes it's a clear case of onomatopoeia (a word that sounds like a sound); other times the connection is less clear.

Nine is associated with the minor keys on a piano.

Triangles are always orange. I think I have Journeys in Math to thank for that.

Attack stands up straight then springs forward, slavering.                                                            

Gnarled is as whorled and knotted as the tree branches or hands it describes.

Sometimes, I have to think for a long time before I realize where a particular association came from.

For example, every time I write the word scudding (a word primarily associated with the movement of clouds across the sky), I hear a dull "untz" like someone beat-boxing. This confused me for quite some time, until I remembered Sonic II – a Sega GameGear video game that my family owned when I was young. Sonic had to gather emeralds along his journey to face Dr. Robotnik and rescue Tails. During the second level, Sonic has to bounce on springs hidden in the clouds – springs that sound almost exactly like "untz".

L-i-g-h-t-bulb. (Gru impersonation.)

I think that is what makes words so special. While dictionary definitions are stable enough to allow us to communicate effectively, language itself is fluid and nuanced and intensely personal.

When two people are watching a movie, they may bring different emotions and perspectives to the table, but they see and hear exactly same thing.

But when two people are reading a book, they could be having two completely different experiences.

As an aspiring author, I try to make my readers see what I saw, feel what I felt, and (in some of my more graphic posts) smell what I smelled.

But I will always fail.

Because words are at the same time universal and individual.

And that is what makes them beautiful.

Are there any words like that in your life?