There Oughta Be a Word . . .

     The English language is a beautiful and frightening thing. A few years ago the people who worry about this sort of fact noted that we now have passed the 1 million word mark. Words we understand are a smaller subset of that; if English is your first language, you probably comprehend anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 words. What we USE, however, is an even smaller subset of those, around 10%.

      My articulate and educated husband, who also happens to have a penchant for letting you know when a word isn't used exactly properly, may have an active vocabulary of around 20,000 words, which is a lot. Children learning to speak their native language double their word bank every few months, a pace we can't possibly match as adults. The more education you have, generally the greater your range, although the most verbally poetic and expressive man I know has no formal education beyond high school - a lifetime of reading has given him word wings. Words - beautiful, specific, descriptive, long, short, pithy, and vague - are everywhere. And yet sometimes they fail me utterly.

     Why is there no word for the tangle of sensations when the first fall leaves skitter across the sidewalk, and the not-as-early sunlight slants into the still vibrant begonias, while the scent of cool nights lingers on my damp newspaper?

   Or the feeling when, while lingering over coffee after dinner out, when the perfect equilibrium between temperature and sweetness has finally been achieved, the solicitous waiter tops me off, and, although happy for the more, I rue that I will now have to start again?

    Maybe someone else knows the word for the heart pounding anxiety, tinged with pride in her and wistfulness for the safety of her cradle, that comes each time I take my teen out to practice her new driving skills.

     The ruthless sneakiness of memory is a minefield of lexical pitfalls. When I am uneasy that there is something I have forgotten, but even the shadow of what it might be lies in the unplumbed corner of my mind, there are no ways to express the almost anxiety. I need a word to sum up the rush of associations and memories that a single scent can summon, and then to describe how it is just as quickly gone, and left me with no ability to describe the whiff.  Why, for that matter, is it so hard to describe a smell? We have to associate it WITH something else; as though there are no intrinsic aromas, simply those like or contrary to others. 

     This disappointment in the language is brought on, I think, by the elegance of this season change. I am almost ready to relinquish air-conditioning, sanguine about pulling out the sweaters and leggings, anticipating my peasant cooking style of cold weather months, but still nostalgic for the wavy heat of Mid-West summer. Like so many things, the passage to fall is both so gradual as to be almost unnoticed, and yet also instant; imprisoning it in expression is like putting lightning in a jar.

     And if anyone can find the word to capture the feeling of time both firebolting past me and holding me wrapped in a perfect interval, where past present and future are all in this day, then teach it to me. Until then, I will bumble through the unutterable beauty of these moments, committing to sly memory the nuances and sharp corners, holding tight to all that is just out of my reach. 

     

The Things We Collect

         In the lobby of the public library in my neighborhood, there is a yard square glass-topped display case with the intriguing sign “Things People Collect.” It draws me every time I am there, to peek into the curious favorites of other people’s keepiness. I have dawdled over marbles in every color and pattern, vintage ceramic flower planters shaped like lambs and ponies, and a dizzying array of Pez dispensers.

       I once installed my own collection there for a smug month; miniatures from dozens of places I have visited around the world, such as a pinkie sized Eiffel Tower and Plymouth Rock as a pebble. I like my miniatures because they are, of course, small, and they remind me warmly of neat places and things we did there. Noble purposes for a collection. 

   Why we keep what we keep is a mystery. I mean collecting, not its more insistent and unwelcome cousin, hoarding, which by now has its own entry in the DSM5, and differs in many respects, including that collecting is usually by choice, not compulsion.  Not all collecting is by choice, of course. Once you admit to liking a particular category of things, mere affinity can swiftly be transformed into collecting by well-meaning friends who are relieved to have a ready gift idea. That is how my mother started her girlhood collection of kitschy salt and pepper sets, although she soon realized she liked the idea of them more than the reality. Reversing that perception took her years of disappointed birthdays. 

     Maybe we keep things that remind of us things we’ve done or places we’ve gone, like my miniatures collection. Sometimes we are drawn to things that complement our inner being. I have a friend who loves boxes; decorative, artsy, the tinier the better, and particularly those that nest. She also likes life to be nested within its lines, safely contained by rules, and to proceed in its pattern toward long-established and desirable goals.

     My husband doesn’t collect so much as he gathers. Perhaps as a hedge against the day we will run out of the skinny plastic sleeves the newspaper comes in, he will stash them in drawers for some undefined future use. He has learned to never start a sentence to me with the words “shouldn’t we keep. . .” lest he risk a withering stare and a march to the recycle bin.

    My collecting coexists uneasily alongside a frequent exhibition of Spartanism, which does not yet have its own entry in the journals, but should, under Traits All Mothers of Small Children Should Have. With Spartanism, you determinedly eject things from your life, such as the day I emptied my house of all the unconnected-to-anything cords, wires, chargers to things that no longer charge, extra long cables to a.v. equipment that doesn’t a. or v., and anything with the word coaxial in it. Although my friend Anne believes I really do still have every stitch of clothes I have ever bought since the early 80’s, I go through phases in which nothing in my or anyone else’s closet in my house is safe. I plead guilty to having pitched the paper while my husband was still reading it, and once got rid of a box of slides from my grandparents’ attic dating from the 50’s without even opening it. Oh please, you know you have one like that in the basement somewhere and just aren’t brave enough to pitch it.

    I have also deliberately sabotaged my collections, in order to keep them from growing. My last kitchen redo included a non-magnetic stainless steel refrigerator; now I have nowhere to display my hundreds of magnets, so it is OK to stop bringing them home. Some simply die a natural death; with the demise of smoking in public watering holes, no one makes matches with clever bar logos anymore. Does that make my thousands of matchbooks more or less interesting? With his transition from youthful ballcaps to nicer fedoras and brimmed hats, my husband doesn’t know what to do with his shelves of souvenir lids, but at least he is no longer compelled to buy them when we travel. 

      Maybe we collect in order to stave off the passing of time; if I have all the plastic Harpo’s cups from my sorority years, I can’t possibly be old enough to have a child looking at colleges, right?  Or to tie us to a certain time; I love using my grandmother’s china because it makes me feel her around my table, although she has been gone for decades.

    I am at the point in my life when purging is more attractive than acquiring. Unfortunately, so is my mother, and frequently her outlet is me; many the mom night when she brings another load of “my things,” which I reluctantly take, knowing these items of questionable sentiment will soon hit the Goodwill pile. I look forward to the inevitable downsizing of the house, as my clearing out will then finally have purpose and justification.

      Until then, I resolve that collecting will be as it should; narrow, focused, and only of those things meaningful and symbolic. However tempting it is to continue acquiring decorative plates for my kitchen, knowing that I now have enough is both liberating and satisfying. I will revel in the seashells I have without needing to pick up any more. I will collect experiences, and memories, and emotions; all things for which I have unlimited storage. Although I can never fit them in a display case, they will never be purged from my heart. Or have to be dusted.