morethanenoughtruth

My two most riveting memories of passing from child to teen were Aunt Judy’s debilitating illness and my own chagrin at being sent away to boarding school, resentful that my exile pleased Dear Uncle Wesson.  It was a private Catholic school ninety miles north of Dallas where, then thirteen and exhibiting a penchant for questioning authority, I was sure to encounter corrective discipline.  But at St. Joseph’s Academy I found only a firm constancy quickly recognized as love.

The nuns, identical black and white starched penguins, patiently endured my exchange of salt and sugar in their private refectory, and affected a studied silence when I unrolled the toilet tissue from Mother Superior’s lavatory, down the hall and through the high school classrooms.  They even withheld comment on my dragging the bubble gum machine from its place in the courtyard and installing it in the nuns’ chapel beside the altar, next to the votive light dispenser.  I finally ran out of energy for pranks and settled into a pleasant and well-ordered life as boarding school student.

The women became individual friends and mentors, their own distinct personalities overcoming the anonymity of the veil.  I loved my seventh grade teacher, Sr. Rose Marie, doing my very best to please her.  She commented favorably on my mature vocabulary, so I bought a pocket notebook in which to record new and even more resplendent words, which I used conspicuously at every opportunity.  She was a favorite of many of the students.  At recess we clustered about her like puppies, vying for a place beside her on the big opposing seat swinging glider.  One beautiful spring day, happily occupying one of the favored spots on either side of her, I hugged her deliciously fat arm, burrowing my face into its warmth, as we all swung and sang with the Hit Parade.  Suddenly she jumped up, shook her arm free and barked, “Leave me alone!  Let go of me!”  She ran sobbing into the building, black veil floating in her wake.

I was mortally embarrassed, sure I must have done something heinous to have so upset her.  I hid the rest of the day in the attic of the convent, my refuge discovered finally by Mother Superior.  “Don’t be afraid, my dear, ” she consoled, proffering her smile, which never failed to light up her crinkled face.  “I’m so glad to have found you.  We have looked simply everywhere.  Sister told me what happened, and it wasn’t your fault.  She was just feeling sad because she will never be able to have a daughter of her own.  She does love you, you know.”

I wept then, both sad and happy, for Sr. Rose Marie’s loneliness, and for the gift of Mother Superior’s kindness.  I observed the world to be a fearsome place, tenderness rare and exceeding precious.  Mother Superior took my hand, gave it a squeeze, and retracing her steps through the shadowy, spider web draped loft, she led me out to join the others.

It was Sr. Rose Marie who cemented my love for words learned first at the knee of my poet mother, later from the beauty of the words themselves.  Words as parcels of thought carried a mystical truth, endemic to their meaning.  In my mind’s eye, they flit from person to person, out of and perhaps into the very heart of God.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  How could–how can–I not love words?

“The Book Thief,” one of my favorite movies is a classic film-long jou de mot.  Markus Zusak penned the historical novel that inspired the movie.  His young heroine Liesel Menninger hoards her trove of word-finds chalked on the walls of the family basement, where they secrete a lone Jew during the Nazi atrocity.  He sleeps under the stairs, wrapped in blankets, coming out only during an air raid, when all good Gentiles are hiding underground.  It’s a rare time to marvel at the glory of God shimmering across the night sky, a numinous bloom of twinkling stars.  He entertains Liesel with tales of Semitic beginnings, featuring God as Word and then blossoming into the imaginative possibilities of writing as art, where words may flit and float anywhere, anywhere at all.

Zusak enjoyed playing with words in Book Thief, but nobody much enjoys my own love affair with lexicon.  Too often my prosody slithers about–a thesaurus on steroids, waving way too many legs.  Our Monday Morning Writer’s Group balks at having to reach for the dictionary just to wade through one of my self-indulgent monographs.  Even Pauletta Hensel’s Art of Personal Writing assemblage digs in their collective heels when I stoke up a giddy head of prose.  Surely personal writing can accommodate an honest case of lexophilia.  No?  What’s to be done?

Word lovers adore using words—the bigger the better, but those words had better get something accomplished.  When push comes to shove, there are words that push all day, but nothing much happens.  A shove, on the other hand, is where a push actually creates motion.  That’s why throwaway crutch words weaken what we write.  They only push–pathetically.  Often it’s the shortest word that ignites the dynamite.  Our choices need to be great, not gleefully gargantuan.

Some admonitions are devoutly to be remembered.  I must try.  Elegant word choice lies not in length but in precision.  Length is encumbrance; precision is denouement.  Like sex, long is good only if it works.  Utilizing an excess of fifty-cent words doesn’t qualify anybody as a lexicographer.  Word choice must be the best, the all-time-most-perfect selection to deliver certain intent.  Longer is never better if it’s shorter that draws the blood.  A muddy mire of multi-syllabic muck is nobody’s idea of good prose.  Keep-it-simple-stupid so Sr. Rose Marie can be proud.

My name is Dorothy Jeanette Martin.  I am a recovering word addict.  It has been seventeen seconds since last I used.  Please pray for me.  The Good Lord has given up.  Is it hopeless?