The Work of Winter (from www.ncarts.org)
By Kathryn Stripling Byer
This time of year poet Adrienne Rich’s words bubble up into my
consciousness: “The work of winter starts fermenting in my head / how with
the hands of a lover or a midwife / to hold back till the time is right.” She
urges to “trust roots” and “learn what an underground journey / has been,
might have to be; speak in a winter code / let fog, sleet, translate; wind, carry
them.”
This time of year my imagination wants to trust roots. To go underground
where so much of our inner journey takes place. In other words, it wants
time to think about the origins of memory and language. It’s a time when I
pull out my Oxford English Dictionary, hold up the magnifying glass and
look up the sources of words I use everyday. Where did they come from?
How have they changed? Inevitably, this always leads me back to the
question, “How have I changed?”
Because I recently turned sixty-five, a truth that women of a certain age are
not supposed to own up to, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “old.” I
don’t feel old, I just feel as if I’ve been around for a long time, learned a lot
(though not enough) and that I’m in my prime.
When I turned to the origins of the word “old,” I found that it’s a very old
word indeed, and that its root many centuries ago meant “to nourish.”
Tracking it into Old English, I discovered that it becomes “oeld,” meaning
mature and lasting, something to be valued. The word appears numerous
times in medieval writings, and nearly always in a positive context.
Knowing this, I now no longer mind thinking of myself being described as
“old.”
When we begin to think about how our language began, we are drawn back
to a speech that sounded earthy, no trace of Latin in it. A language of
survivors in a cold, rough landscape. Over the years that language changed
by absorbing words from all over the planet, but mostly words from French
and Latin. Just about any word one picks out of a dictionary contains a piece
of that history. The renowned English poet W. H. Auden once said that
every one of his poems is a hymn of praise to the English language. A poet
in any language feels the same way about what we call the mother tongue.
Our mother tongue nourishes us. Just as the word “eald” meant centuries
ago.
Each morning my husband reads a page from his “Calendar of Forgotten
English,” a ritual that began 5 years ago when I gave him the 2000 calendar
for Christmas. These calendars collect words no longer in use, or not often,
and they lie on our table, waiting to be read while my husband drinks his
coffee. Words like “flaws” (gust of wind) and “blague” (humbug). Old
words. And, finally, not forgotten. Here they lie beside the cereal box, the
jam and butter, another morning’s invitation to look back and realize what
the word “old” really means. Still here. Ready for another year. Pick a word.
Any word. And it will carry you back to the roots of our language, and
forward into a present made even richer for knowing how the past spoke
itself.
