Words. I enjoy words, I enjoy writing, I enjoy wordplay, nicknames, puns, and a well-told story; what I do not enjoy is the formal English language. And anyone like me who has formally studied foreign languages realizes just how much they don’t know about their own language and, upon further examination, just how hard English really is.

Years ago, I took an English class and wondered if I was in the right class as they started talking about present past participles — clearly this is a physics or chemistry term. Later followed by a discussion on gerunds which, as we all know, are in the same family as gerbils. It was only a matter of time until the nightmares began, being caught in a blackened forest of subordinate clauses and chased by infinitives and sentence fragments as I slowly sink into the primordial ooze of objective, subjective, and possessive cases.

What is Christian materialism, you may ask? It’s a Catholic thing, of course. I know, I know – always the danged papists! – insisting on embracing the power of Both/And at a time when most people automatically assume Either/Or. You’re either a spiritualist or a materialist; either a religionist living in a secular world or a secularist tolerating those religious nuts. You can’t be both!

Phooey. As a Catholic Christian, I’m probably more tolerant of religious nuts than your average secularist… Ahem.

It is common mental health advice to “play crossword puzzles or play word games.”

Whether you play a traditional board game like Scrabble or Boggle, do a crossword puzzle in your local newspaper, or play an online word game, games that have you play with letters and words and ideas can improve memory, concentration, and problem-solving.

I have always loved words. The bigger or more abstruse or obsolete, the better they are. When I was perhaps twelve, I discovered a wonderful word: Sinistrorotatory. What’s it mean? Same as widdershins. Wait, you don’t know that one either? Lævorotatory. Still not helping? Well, let’s break it apart.

Rotatory means spinning. Sinistro comes from the Latin word for left, sinister (Hi, @randywebster!). So that means it is rotating to the left, or counter-clockwise or anti-clockwise. Yes, there are five fun terms for the same thing. I love the English language. Do you?

Julia grew up poor. Her parents were Polish immigrants who barely spoke English. She was three when the stock market fell and she grew up during the Great Depression and World War II. She never finished high school, instead getting a job to help bring in money in hard times. She was intelligent enough. She continued to learn throughout her life. But, she always felt inferior because she had never finished high school.

After the war, there were some good times. She could spend the money she earned on fancy stockings she couldn’t get during the war. She could go out with her girlfriends. She worked as an artist and illustrator. Then she met a man, married, and stayed home to raise two girls while her husband worked as an electrical lineman for the city. Both of her daughters grew up to graduate from college before that was the norm. She must have encouraged them to get the education that she never had, that her skilled trades husband had never had.