On words

                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                     And words I like
                                                                                                                     beyond the meaning
                                                                                                                     they convey

                                                                                                                     to know them
                                                                                                                     to learn about them
                                                                                                                     I also like

And here I am, once again, writing for the sake of writing.   

Before I learnt how to write, before reading became a habit, words were meaningful.  I enjoyed their sound, even the sound of those I did not understand. I loved learning new words. I would repeat them to myself silently, rather like savoring a peace of candy.  Both myself and my siblings were tuned to three languages, Spanish, our mother tongue, German, spoken by our mother and her mother - we lived with our parents and maternal grandparents - and English, spoken by our mother with her school friends.  We did not learn English until we started school, and neither did we know German then, so we spoke in sounds that represented to us what the two women in our household spoke.

This feeling for words developed, in my case, into writing.  It was only in my late teens I understood it could become a profession.

Why do I think of those first words now?    Because now, when speaking, I often have trouble remembering a word, a simple word, a name, the name of somebody or something I know well, which is embarrassing.  It does not happen when I write.