I’m a word nerd. I know, it’s not a big confession. I started 1st grade in post-Salazar Lisbon. I remember walking with my mother in the city, and trying to read the campaign ads glued to the fronts of the buildings. I read everything that came in front of me. We didn’t have cold cereal boxes back then (that makes me sound so old!), or I would have read them.
My mother had only been to school for four years (her family were extremely poor) but she loved reading. She collected books, and she read to us. Despite her academic limitations, she knew she could improve herself by reading, and she did (she still does). She was an example to me.

My reading obsession only intensified with age. By the time I started high school (in Portugal, high school starts in 7th grade), I turned to my mother’s modest library and to the Portuguese classics. I was the quintessential geek- I spent Summer vacations with my head in a book, unlike my siblings who were outside as often as they could. By 9th grade, I developed a mild fixation with dictionaries (my friends didn’t think it was mild). I was mesmerized with words. I would open the dictionary to a word, read the entry, and then find as many synonyms as I could. I soon realized I could play with words— words were my friends. The possibilities were endless. I wrote several poems in Portuguese for the rest of high school. I wrote in rhymes, sonnets, and free verse. I even had one published in a national newspaper that specialized in books, music, and arts for young people.

My university major was in Portuguese/English Teaching. And yes, you guessed it- poems in English. They began as a challenge to myself, and soon grew their own wings. I fell in love with words all over again, but this time in another language. The British and American classics were part of the curriculum, and they became a new obsession. I still remember the first time my AmLit professor introduced Thoreau—it was love at first sight, literally (which is true in this case).

After university, I served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for 18 months. I got married 6 months after that (which is a story for another day), and found myself living in Utah. I was on hiatus from creative wording for some time, but never from reading. Read, read, read—if I can’t read, then something is wrong.

This is my word pedigree. This is how I get to call myself a word nerd.

I’m back to creating with words, this time in prose. I confess my poetry roots are still there. I find myself sneaking in the poetry with the narration, sometimes not successfully. English is not my first language, and the barrier is greater than I think at times (not to mention the cultural gap, which is fodder for another post). But it’s exciting to see the progress of these words. They tell a story. One that I love and find beautiful.

I hope you will too.