I used to be afraid to use words. Of lining them up in rows, in choosing this one over that one. Maybe it was shyness, or humility, or insecurity. I longed to be expressive, but as my husband (Ramon) would often say, "Why do people pick hard words over simple words, that most people already know?" He was no help!

You know who was a help? My dad was a help. Another man you would think preferred the simpler words, but who one day unknowingly pressed a "I can do this" button in me.

It was in Colorado, where Ramon and I had rented temporarily, and were preparing to buy a house. Because we hadn't been there long, we didn't have a phone line put in. Instead, we drove weekly to a phone booth with piles of quarters in hand, to call our parents.

Winter was approaching, and my dad asked, "How are you acclimating?"

Acclimating? What's that?? I had to ask him, "What does that mean, 'acclimating'?"

He pleasurably informed me that it meant how a person was adjusting to new surroundings, and usually a change in climate that might come along with that.

Oh. Why didn't he just ask if I was getting used to the weather in this new location? 

I don't know! But I liked that he thought I might know the word. I liked that HE knew the word.

My dad was "just" a hod carrier, a union laborer. He worked hard, with his back, and with his hands. He wasn't prone to very deep or long conversations, ever that I knew of. When I heard him use this intriguing word that I did not know, I realized that I honestly didn't know the true extent of his vocabulary.

And I was suddenly interested more, in his vocabulary, and what it might mean for mine. I knew that Dad spoke about John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Pearl S. Buck. He had their books on a shelf. 

I picked them up when I lived at home, and I eventually read them when I lived elsewhere. I loved that my dad knew these authors. 

But I think too my dad was like Ramon and so many others, myself included at times, why use certain words, when you can use simpler words?

Sometimes we should keep it simple! And sometimes, why not use other words, beautiful words, expressive words, when you can, if you dare, if you think someone else might appreciate or even extract something good, from them?

My dad pushed a button in me, and my husband has come along for the ride. Ramon now says living with me is like living with a dictionary....not quite! There's always so many more words to learn.

But the less-simple ones I've learned and became willing to openly use, I've come to think I can somehow credit to my dad. All I had to hear was a glimmer of his joy at teaching me a word! All I had to absorb was that he likely knew so many more, but that shyness, humility, and insecurity kept those words locked up in a pen of inhibition. 

Here are some words (not mine, not complicated) I also think my dad would have enjoyed--the heart of their very expression. Love and concern for children in what can be a cruel, uncertain world, so many of us craving the peace of wild things, and places.

I'm not so sure we who grew up in the concrete of cities would so naturally "lie where the wood drake rests" but I know my dad did long for natural and growing things! Where he lived he created his own backyard haven, and he would have loved Ramon's and my haven here in Wisconsin, where the backdrop of this poem looks just like our home, and the peace of wild things.