Vocabulary Lesson

     It was a luminous day, a day full of possibility, the sun radiant, the air clear--the gift of winter, her mother would proclaim on such a day, "Six above and the glory of the earth shineth."

   Sybil often called up her mother's voice, her mother's gift for pronouncements and proclamations, as if she were quoting a saint, a famous poet, the Bible. "Add an -eth to any word or phrase," Mama had told her, "and you immediately sound smart, learnéd, and widely read."

    Sybil did notice the emphasis on the final -ed in learnéd--another subtle lesson in how to appear smart and, yes, learned. She had absorbed those teachings without thinking much about them, and assumed that everybody's mother was diligently planting vocabulary in her children's unconscious to make them appear smarter than they were.

    Well, it had worked. Adam had visibly brightened when she proclaimed the day glorious, laughed appreciatively when he overheard her describe him as indefatigable. It was easy to embrace her mother's lexicon after that, to casually work anomaly into a conversation, to be loquacious without sinking into garrulousness, and to offer Adam strings of accolades in her practiced and carefully honed mellifluous voice.

    And now, as she walked down the aisle towards a glowing Adam, she realized she should have changed her name to Eve, but grace and the gift of her extensive research dismissed that thought as quickly as it had appeared. Sybil, the prophetess, Sybil, the oracle, was just what Adam, her earthy, well-grounded Adam, needed. It was, indeed, a luminescent day for them both.