A ‘plethora’ of ‘delectable’ words, and even more love

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham:

Amy has called me Mimi since the afternoon we met. She was 5 then and though I wasn’t her Mimi, my grandson Adam, who also was 5, called me Mimi so she did, too.

I’m still not Amy’s Mimi. Not officially. But unofficially, in our patchwork quilt of a family, I am. I am Mimi and Amy is my granddaughter because she is the daughter of my daughter’s partner, and until the world comes up with better words for what we mean to each other, we’re stuck using words that don’t quite fit. Which is ironic considering that Amy Hylen is a stickler for words.

Words, in fact, are what connected us.

When she was 9 and 10 and 11 and 12, she would send me notes written in fluorescent pink, studded with words like delectable and plethora. “Thank you so much for the wonderful egg hunt, Easter party and the delectable meal! I had a plethora of fun …”

Sometimes it was, “Your altruism is extraordinary. Thank you so much!”

Sometimes it was simply, “I am adamant that I love you, Mimi.”

Amy’s vocabulary was always big and her envelopes always small. When I would see a tiny, white square with pink print in my mailbox, I would smile in anticipation of the treasure buried inside.

I thought that as Amy grew older she might lose her love of words. I believed that TV and the Internet and music and sports and schoolwork and texting and being with friends would keep her from reading and falling head over heels in love with words she didn’t know. Words she had to look up and learn. But she is as hooked as ever.

She is a senior in high school now, turning 18 in a few days. She got her first college acceptance letter two weeks ago, and she doesn’t write in fluorescent pink swirls anymore. And yet, the perfect word, the sound of it, the feel of it on her tongue, the discovery of it, still makes her swoon. “I just learned this word and I LOVE it!!!” she texted a few weeks ago. “Meraki. Do you know it? It means to put something of yourself into your work. It means soul, creativity, the love you put into something. Isn’t it fantastic?” A few days later it was “ardor” that had her over the moon.

Amy’s love affair with words may have begun with the shower curtain that hangs in a bathroom at her house. It’s an SAT prep vocabulary shower curtain filled with combinations of letters that when she was little probably looked strange to her: confluence; plebeian; effusion. But now, after many incarnations of the same shower curtain (her mother must have bought at least a dozen), these words are old friends.

Or maybe Amy’s love affair with words began with the picture books her mother read to her when she was small. Or with the chapter books she read herself. Or with young adult books. “What does half-hearted mean?” she asked one summer day when she was 12 and reading “Walk Two Moons” by Sharon Creech. Or maybe her love of words is innate, as much a part of her as her kindness and her always-at-the-ready smile.

I have to guess at where Amy’s love of words began, at when exactly she started keeping a notebook full of them. But I don’t have to guess at this: I know for certain that words continue to be our bridge to each other.

Dorothy may be our biggest bridge. Dorothy is Amy’s middle name. But I didn’t know this, not when I met her, not when our families became woven together, not for two, maybe three years.

My mother’s name was Dorothy. It’s an old-fashioned name. You don’t hear it much anymore. When I was young, I didn’t like the name. But I do now.

I don’t remember where I was when I learned that Amy is Amy Lee Dorothy Hylen. What I remember is feeling the way I imagine George Bailey felt in the final scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life” when a bell on his Christmas tree begins to ring. ”Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings,” his daughter says, and George Bailey looks up to heaven and smiles because he knows this is true.

I looked up to heaven, too, when I heard Dorothy because I knew with the certainty of George Bailey exactly what Dorothy meant: My mother had finally gotten her namesake.

“Quick question, Mimi: Do you like ‘my authentic zest’ or ‘my authentic spice’ better?”

Amy Lee Dorothy Hylen. She’s a stickler for words. She calls me Mimi. And I call her my granddaughter because she is.