I am a bit of a hoarder. Well, really I just keep things I feel I might use sometime in the future. When my girls finally have to clean out this place they are not going to think fondly on this habit that is left over from my early years.
Besides their tiny table and chairs from their childhood, their Barbie dolls and various colouring books, one of the adult things I have is The Secretary’s Desk Book. It is as old as I am but somehow it fell into my hands years ago and I have used it steadily since. Mind you, now my computer tells me with red and blue lines when my grammar is incorrect, or my spelling atrocious.
I find language fascinating and perhaps that is why I decided to write down all the words starting with “t” that could be changed into a different word by deleting that letter. (Seniors have time for these mind-bending ventures.) There are about 56 words. (I may have missed a few)…words like table, tall, tape, twig, turn, twin, the list goes on and on. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between the old word and the new one, but it made me realize how such a small thing can change the whole complexion of things.
For some, that first cigarette, that first drink, the first time you took the car past 110 km all seemed like such little things but the price paid down the road is often full of problems you could never have anticipated.
The letter “t” looks a bit like a cross. I feel that with the cross before me, I can trust in God no matter what follows. The word “there” changes to “here” in an instant if you pull the “t” out of it and life changes very quickly if we pull God out of it.
Some people do crosswords, and it is a good mind stretcher, but today I had a lot of fun just playing games with all the “t’s¨ in the dictionary.
Going from “here” to “there” is a pattern in most of our lives. Adding “the cross” makes our destination a little safer and a lot clearer.
