My dad, the Wordsmith

 Memories have always been really interesting to me. Mostly because I have a HORRIBLE memory - long term and short term. I don't really remember specific things about my childhood (or even about the last few years if I'm really honest), unless I have pictures or videos of the event. This is one of the reasons why I love to blog so much. I feel like it really helps me to remember things that I don't ever want to forget. As mommies, we always think there is no way we could forget a certain day, or a certain phase that our kids went through....but having my oldest child as an 11 year old now, I realize that you DO forget! (or at least I do).

And then there's those random things that just stick out in your mind and you remember forever..... Usually,  it's something really unique about a person or a certain time period.

Well, this week I had a conversation with my friend about words and vocabularies. Immediately, I thought of my dad...

Since I can remember, my dad has always had somewhat of a love affair with the English language. He loves words, and he loves how they are and can be used. He has this little pocket dictionary, that I remember would be kept in a brown little box (at least in my mind it was brown) which held receipts and coins and his keys....and the dictionary. If you opened it up, you would see notes scrawled all over the pages and words highlighted everywhere. These represented all of the words that my dad had chosen at some time to look up, and then he would try to use them as much as possible in conversation.

I can remember talking to my dad and hearing some strange word - like "ubiquitous" - and laughing, knowing that it must have been one of his new words for the week.

When I was telling my friend all of this, my heart just swelled up with love and affection for my dad. Perhaps because I don't have too many vivid memories, I just really cherish it when a memory stands out so strong.

It's funny because I'm sure my dad would never think that one of his daughters would find his love for words so endearing. And I'm positive that he didn't create his wordlists to impress anybody. And yet, I know that for my lifetime, this will be one of my best memories of my dad. My dad, the wordsmith.

Here is just a glimpse of his most recent wordlist -- not to toot his horn because he would never want such a thing - but simply for my own purposes to have a log of one of my most precious memories:

CORRECTION: My dad just emailed me that he never owned a pocket dictionary. You see what I mean about my memory?? He did keep a hard copy though of words that were sometimes highlighted. I could have sworn it was in some sort of book. But nope, I'm wrong. Don't trust me people - I have no idea what I'm talking about :) (The word list though is real and authentic - I promise!!)