Who Needs Descriptive Words?

Maybe I've mentioned this before, but I really dislike descriptive words like adjectives.

Take that sentence I just wrote:  I really dislike descriptive words.  I could have come up with something else besides really dislike.  Despise, I suppose, or abhor.  That shows a lot of feeling.  Maybe it's not so strong a feeling, so I could say another series of words that means I only somewhat dislike descriptive words.  Alternatively, I could make a great analogy.  I could say that I really dislike descriptive words the way that ... the way that, uh, squirrels dislike being shot by BB guns.  Or the way that toddlers dislike naps.  Or the way that ... Alright, let's face it:  I'm horrible at those.

Turns out I'm horrible at the whole thing.  I don't have a great thesaurus of a mind that comes up with excellent and creative ways to describe things.  If I sit for a while and try to think of the best way to say that I really dislike descriptive words, then I'll just think, "Well, how about I really dislike descriptive words."  It's simple.  It's clear.  It's to the point.

Not that I don't enjoy reading good descriptive words.  My friends Sarah and Garrett are exceptionally good at them, and I enjoy that immensely.  I can still remember a blog post written years ago where Sarah described someone at the grocery store.  She described the woman's red face as looking like a welder's face if that welder had forgotten to wear a mask.  (See, I'm even bad at summing up someone ELSE'S analogies.)  "Genius!" I thought when I read that.  And then I promptly put all thoughts of ever being an author out of mind.  It struck me in that very moment that I don't have what it takes to write beautifully.

This doesn't bother me, though.  Who needs to write beautifully?  Sometimes beautiful prose for the sake of beautiful prose just annoys me.  Give me a Hemmingway who will talk about walking down by the river at sunset by saying something un-beautiful like, I was walking down by the river at sunset.  I don't need to walk through golden streams of glorious blah blah blah.  He was walking.  It was by the river.  And it was sunset.  Enough said.

This is why I appreciate American Sign Language.  You know how you turn the sign big into really big or gigantic or whatever else that means really big?  You sign it bigger and use facial expression.  Which means that you're expressing what you really want to say by showing it on your face and in the movement of your hands, and the only "word" you have to use is that one:  big.  Fantastic!

ASL was meant for descriptive-word-challenged people like me.

(I love ASL the way that ... apples love ... uh, trees?  Umm.  I love ASL the way that dogs love bones?  Hormonal women love chocolate?  Toddlers love their blankies?  Whatever.  I love ASL.)

10 Years

I was listening to the radio while driving my nearly 10-year-old daughter to piano lessons last night.  It happened to be on NPR, which I don't listen to as a general rule (my husband listens to it and then reports to me all the good stuff, while I get to listen to music I enjoy.  It's a great arrangement), and before I could change the station, the segment caught my attention.  It was about a woman who lost her mother in the 9/11 attacks.  I listened as she talked about some of her struggles dealing with such a great loss in the national spotlight.  I was intrigued by her experience.  It wasn't until the NPR guy said at the end of the segment that there would soon be a 10-year tribute that it dawned on me that it really has been a decade since that day.  I said, "Oh yeah.  It's been 10 years."

And my daughter asked, "10 years since what?"

I was floored.  How could she not know?  "Since nine eleven."  She was silent.  "Do you know what that is?"  "No."  "The nine eleven attacks?  Twin towers?  Osama bin Laden?"  Nope, nope, nope.

Woah.

So I set about explaining, in pretty simple terms, what happened on that day.  About Osama bin Laden and terrorism.  I think it was the first time we'd even talked about the concept of terrorism.  We talked about the men who hijacked the planes, and the passengers who fought back and went down with the plane in Pennsylvania.  We talked about the images on TV, about watching the towers fall to the ground, and then the dust that was everywhere.  About the rubble, and searching for survivors.  "You wouldn't believe it, Miciah.  It was crazy."  Then we talked about the wars our country is fighting (she knew about those - we sometimes talk about them) and about how those stemmed from that one crazy, unbelievable day.  We talked about Osama bin Laden, and how our country just issued an order to go in and kill him, and about how it's weird to be happy that someone was killed.

Miciah was silent and solemn for most of the conversation, and occasionally threw in a "That's awful."

I was surprised how sad I still am about what happened that day.  I found myself suppressing the getting-choked-up feeling, my chest getting tight, and tears right behind my eyes.  I talked to Miciah about how sad we all were, for a long time.  How comedians stopped their work for a while because no one wanted to laugh.  Things just didn't seem very funny.  It truly was a life-changing day.

Strange that I was pregnant with her when 9/11 happened.  Strange that an event that so impacted my life and my time was unknown to her, even though she's so young.

On the one hand, I'm glad she didn't know.  I'm glad she didn't have to live through that.  But on the other hand, it's so important for her to understand this event that has shaped our last 10 years*.  If we really can prevent repeating history by learning about it, then by golly, this rising generation better learn about 9/11!

(*It seems a little over-the-top to say that this event "shaped our last 10 years", but in this case, I don't think it's an exaggeration.  Could you imagine what the last decade would have looked like if the 9/11 events hadn't happened?)

Stolen Quote #35

"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves."

- stolen from Carl Jung (1875 - 1961), Swiss psychiatrist, in The Integration of the Personality