trevor’s dictionary of lost words

I am a doctor.

The ground is my floor. 

The leaves of the trees are my ceiling.

The good earth is my hospital.

One by one, the campesinos limp to me.

They sit.

They peel off their soaked boots.

They show me their blistered feet. 

Their feet are the feet of the good earth.

They are the people of the good earth.

Gabby sits before me. 

I wash her feet.

I gently wash away the dirt and pain, until her feet are cool and clean. 

I rub salve on her feet.

My hands work to heal her.

She leans forward and kisses the top of my head.

trevor’s dictionary of lost words

in the still

and quiet

time

before dawn

i rise

from the bed,

kneel down 

beside her,

kiss

her brown eyes

as a blessing 

for seeing;

kiss

her hands

as a blessing

for touching;

kiss

her feet

as a blessing

for walking;

kiss

her cheeks 

as a blessing 

for loving;

one thousand 

silent

words

trevor’s dictionary of lost words

I love words.

Sometimes, in the hours before dawn, I lay in bed with my eyes closed and say some of my favorite words over and over again - beauty, plain, genius, simple, wonder, ordinary, courage, human. 

They are my comfort and joy as I prepare to give myself to the world.

I carry a copy of Webster’s dictionary in my back pocket. (A real, pocket-sized one)

If I have moments during the day when I’m still and silent, I open it and read a page and learn new words I never knew or ever used before.

Do you know the word ‘akimbo?’

As I say it aloud, it reminds me of the Malinke words I learned to speak when I lived in Mali.

The ‘a’ and the ‘o’ sounds flow like water around a giant rock ‘k.’

It reminds me of the Malinke words I learned to speak when I lived in Mali

It’s an adverb that means ‘hands on the hips with elbows turned outward.’

I often stand akimbo in the elementary school where I teach and write, giving students my ‘use words to build up, not to tear down...for creating, not chaos making’ look.

Sanctuary is my 2021 word.

The most important paper I wrote at UNC-Chapel Hill was about the Sanctuary Movement.

Have you heard of it?

It was an underground railroad of people and places that helped protect refugees fleeing violence in Central America in the 1980’s.

The movement is still alive and giving life today.

I love the idea of offering my life to help and protect others. 

I love the idea of opening my heart as a sanctuary.

I love the idea of being a sanctuary.

For everyone.

For you.

trevor’s dictionary of lost words

“US to Dig Trench Along Mexican Border,” read headlines in newspapers all across America. 

The President of the United States signed an executive order that authorized the digging of the trench. 

Crews began digging the 800 feet wide, 800 feet deep trench today. 

It will run from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. 

It will be filled with water from the ocean and the gulf.

“It’s going to be the most beautiful trench you’ve ever seen,” said the President at a press conference beside the olympic sized pool at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. “Believe me, this trench will make America great again. And Mexico is going to pay for it. And it give great exercise to the people who try to swim across it. Finally, for the first time in history, you will have a President who will keep America safe from the huddled masses yearning to breathe free!”

“It’s going to be a muddy eyesore,” responded the leader of the opposition to the trench. “The only thing muddier is the thinking of people who want to dig trenches to keep hurting people out.”

“Really. The President is making America great again by making it safe for the first time in history, and making it safe again my making it great for the first time in history. Really,” wrote an ally of the President in an editorial supporting the trench in the Washington Post.

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, there is a whale. 

Scientists named him 52 Blue because he sings his whale song at a frequency of 52 Hz. 

Other whales can’t hear his song.

They sing at frequencies between 15 and 25 Hz.

What kind of whale is 52 Blue? 

We don’t know. 

He could be a deformed blue whale. 

He could be a cross between blue and fin whales. 

He could be a new kind of whale we have only heard but never seen.

A small, mute migrant kid and his brave Alaskan Iñuit friend are on their way to try to find him.

trevor’s dictionary of lost words

“Po lidda fella,” said the old, weathered woman with skin as dark and wrinkled as bark and arms as thin and knobby as branches of the farthest reaches of the ancient oak trees on the island.

She lived in a holey floored, crack walled, Duck taped, shotgun shack on John’s Island left over from the days of slavery and Jim Crow. 

She fished the inlet and the shoreline each morning, trying to catch red fish, sea trout and flounder to go with the fruits and vegetables from her garden. 

She wove sweet grass into baskets from late morning to early evening.

“Jus sits dere,” she continued, “Eva monin’ as de sun rises ova de ocean an sits on de wada like a ripe tomata. 

Neva says a word. Jus sits dere a’watchin de wada and a’list’nin to de waves.”

One day she walked over to him and stood beside him. 

Her shadow protected him from the bright sun. 

“Wha’s yo name?” she asked kindly. 

“My name’s Mattie. Would you tell me yo name?”

He turned his earthy brown eyes to her. 

He didn’t say a thing. 

She figured he didn’t understand her. 

His mamí and abuelo were migrant workers, picking peaches and tomatoes in the lowcountry summers until moving down the coasts of Georgia and Florida with the southern winters.

“Ma’be he speaks only Spanish,” she thought, for his family came to the United States from the farms and fields of Central America.

Suddenly, he whistled. 

This astonished her.

She almost fell over into the sand. 

The sound was unlike any whistle she had ever heard before in her life.

A usual whistle has two notes and a high pitch.

This whistle, however, was an unusual one. 

It  had all kinds of notes in it.

The pitch went high and low, low and high, and all kinds of places in between. 

It was as if the great composers had written his whistle at the height of their compositional powers.

“Ya know, it was like he was a’tryin to say somepin to me in a be-yoo-tee-ful way,” she explained, “But I din’ hab no idée whad id was.”

He looked back over the water and at the sky again.

He was very still and very quiet. 

She felt a wide compassion for him in the deepest part of her heart. 

She wrapped her arm around him as the tide rolled in and out.

She placed her calloused hand on his head. 

“I be here,” she whispered. 

“I be here.”

trevor’s dictionary of lost words

I see sacrificial love in my Title I elementary school every day.

Our teachers, admin and staff pour out their hearts for our students.

We wake up in the middle of the night wondering how we can make the world a better place for them.

We wonder how we can help them make the world a better place for all of us.

Our students pour out their hearts for us, too.

They work hard from 7:30 AM to 2:15 PM learning how to do things like write small moments about their lives, how to solve a multiplication problem using the area model, and how to create an experiment to investigate the properties of light.

I’m so proud of them.

And our students pour out their hearts for each other.

Just today, one little student was crying in the lunch line and two of her classmates had their arms around her, catching her tears on their shoulders, holding her hurt in their hearts.

Ah, empathy.

In a novel I’m working on, I’m write about this sacrificial love, this pouring out of the heart.

I call it the way of the old ones at work in the world.

It gives me hope.

Here is a part of that story I’m writing.

In a place that hadn't been seen by many people, she hadn't been seen by many people, either. 

The Iñuit people know that every snowflake that falls from the sky is different from all the other snowflakes that fall from the sky. 

No two snowflakes are alike. 

No two snowflakes have ever been alike. 

No two snowflakes will ever be alike.

(I’m dropping some Iñuit wisdom for you.)

The crystals that come together and build the beautiful snowflake are so sensitive to the conditions around them, a wind blowing across the ice or a cloud moving between the sun and the earth or the heartbeat of a whale surfacing in the waters of the Chukchi Sea can change them into something new. 

So Taki's mother and father knew from the beginning that she was unique, that when she was born something new was happening in the world.

This is how they knew.

On the first day of her life, as her mother bundled her in warm blankets in her arms, she made a sound her father had heard only once in his life. 

When he was a boy, he was roaming across the ice near the edge of the sea, hunting whales with the elders of his village. 

There, silently by the sea, a bowhead whale rose to breathe out it’s old, salty breath and breathe in the cold, clean air of the far north. 

The balaena mysticetus, the bowhead whale, was sustenance for the Iñuit people. 

It was a symbol, too.

Whenever the people say it’s name, they whisper it with reverence and awe.

He raised the harpoon to strike the whale, and prayed an ancient prayer taught to him by an old woman.

“I think over again my small 

adventures

My fears, those small ones 

that seemed so big

For all the vital things I had 

to get and reach

And yet there is only one great 

thing, the only thing 

To live to see the great day 

that dawns

And the light that fills the 

world.”

Then he plunged the harpoon into the whale.

Normally, when a bowhead whale is struck by a harpoon, it dives to the bottom of the icy water and tries to flee across the sea. 

It hopes with all it's heart to live another day.

This whale, though, was not a normal whale. 

As Taki’s father stood at the edge of the ice and looked into the eyes of the bowhead whale, the whale willingly gave up it's life.

“Did my prayer reach the small, powerful ears of the giant, kind heart of this whale?” he wondered. 

“Is the way of the old ones working in the world again?”

The sound that Taki made on that first day of her life was the same sound the bowhead whale had made as her father looked into it's eyes.

trevor’s dictionary of lost words

The Greyhound bus chugged out of the station in downtown Charleston into the South Carolina night. 

There were 4,000 miles between Charleston and Point Hope, Alaska. 

"That's a out how far blue whales migrate from Mexico to Alaska," thought Little Salt. 

"If they can make it, maybe I can make it, too."

This first part of the journey would take four days. 

He closed his eyes. 

He felt the tires of the bus thump against the road.

He listened to the soft snore of a soldier in the seat behind him.

He swayed gently from side to side as the driver moved from lane to lane around late night traffic. 

He drifted off to sleep and became a blue whale, the thump of his giant fluke in the deep waters moving him along at 14 miles per hour, the songs of other blue whales from different waters touching his great heart, his giant body swaying from side to side in the Pacific Ocean waters.

He woke to the hand of a frail, old woman on his shoulder. 

"'Scuse me," she whispered, "I hate to wake you up but my ticket says I'm 'sposed to sit here beside you."

He rubbed his eyes with the fists of his hands and looked up into the face of the woman in the soft glow of the bus lights.

There were deep wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead.

They didn't seem like wrinkles of worry that he'd seen form on his mamí and abuelo’s faces as they worked the fields and lived among strangers in small southern towns. 

No, they seemed like wrinkles of kindness that might come from years and years of loving and hoping, the kind of wrinkles you get when you cradle a baby in your arms and rock it deep into the night, the kind that come when you study the small, quiet things in the world and wonder why so few people see or hear the beauty in them.

She tried to keep her eyes open, but they stayed closed a bit longer with each blink, and her head nodded to each passing mile along the Interstate. 

Her breathing came into rhythm with the wheels of the bus on the road. 

The bus moved around a curve and she slid ever so slightly against Little Salt’s body. 

His small shoulder sank into her tired, withered breasts and his smooth cheek rested on the folds of skin on her thin, bony neck. 

Her gentle breaths made a soft whistle through her nose, so soft that no one who was not as close to her as Little Salt could hear it.