one word

When I first read Eat, Pray, Love a couple of years ago, one of the things that struck me, as it has many people, was the section where an Italian friend tells Elizabeth Gilbert that every city can be defined by one word. As can every person. As Elizabeth began to think through the one word for different cities, her family, and finally herself – I couldn’t help but do the same.

While it is true that I love words, I also love them more than one at a time. One can feel rather…limiting. I thought about my one word but eventually brushed the question aside.

It came back. Over the past couple of months, both book clubs that I am a part of have read this book. Both groups couldn’t help but ask the question: What is your one word? The force of a group behind that question made it a little harder to avoid.

And this time, one word came clearly to me. Not for me right now – but I knew without a shadow of a doubt what my word used to be.

Much of my life has been defined by the event of my father leaving our family when I was 6 years old. A common story, so common at times that I wish I could shrug it off. But I can’t, if not for the magnitude of the actual event, then certainly for the magnitude of my reaction. For a number of reasons – my inherent bent toward the dramatic, a leaning toward melancholy, the fact that I considered myself adored by my father, my age at the time – for all of these and more, I took the loss hard. Apparently I cried so much that year that my first grade teacher set up a little corner with soft cushions where I could go sit whenever I needed. Even now I can look through the window in my memory and watch him drive away.

It is no real surprise to reach back and discover that the word – my word – was abandoned.

This is the word that I allowed to define me. Not that I didn’t adjust, didn’t have times of great happiness, success, normalcy. But, the small place deep inside, the place I circled back to in times of fear and need…that place was all about being left behind. So very many of the things I did were about keeping other people from leaving me. Or at the least, about leaving them first.

Like I said, though – this was used to be. What about now? What one word?

I couldn’t do it.

*********************

Last week we took family pictures with Whitney. This is our second go-round and we just had so much fun together. As we trooped around downtown Little Rock, cool air and warm sun and magic light surrounding us, time seemed to slow. I was able to watch my kids smile for her camera, to see them shine in response to her. It was one of those rare opportunities to really see my family, not just as this unit that I’m responsible for running around, but as individuals.

Individuals that I really like.

After we shot for awhile, Whitney announced that she had a project for us. She took out a small chalkboard and colored chalk and told us we were each to write one word without showing anyone else but her: who we were or how we saw ourselves – in relation to our family. Knowing me as she does, and knowing that I would panic at the thought of choosing, she handed me the board first. She was hoping to help me not get stuck in an inner debate over the perfect word; she was hoping to help me pick.

I couldn’t do it.

Of course, my husband could. My brain walks around the corner of every possibility. and can come up with a good reason to try them all. His brain looks around, takes a picture, presses play on the soundtrack, and he’s down the road of the decision already. Taking the board from me, he wrote his word:

How amazing it was to see what they wrote. My precious girl:

The youngest, ever the entertainer:

My middle child, who just may have his mother’s affinity for words as well:

Somewhere in the middle of it all, it came to me – the word I wanted my family to know. The way I feel with them.

It didn’t occur to me until later how those two words fit together. A circle closing. Enclosing.

***************

Still, as wonderful as that word is, I cannot be satisfied with one. Or, with the gnawing uncertainty that comes with the defining. With the picking of just one word for who I am. Am I being honest enough? Positive enough? Erudite enough?

This is what has come to me, though. I love words. And there are words I would love to be. And so – I will lay those words out in front of me in the hope that even if they are not true of me yet, they one day will be.

• openhearted
• wonder
• hope
• amazed
• true
• artist
• unafraid
• laughter

What words would you add? For me, or for you?