Gnarled

My daughter and I are up late, reading our separate books in the shared space of my room. Hers is a fantasy novel, mine a collection of poems about industrial towns, factory work, bored schoolchildren, lonely mothers.

“There’s a word here I don’t know,” she says. “G-N-A-R-L-E-D.”

I pronounce the word for her, explain that the G is silent, and tell her what it means. I tell her to imagine a tree with long and twisted limbs, to imagine the tree in autumn, bare of leaves, stark against the sky. I ask her to put her foot on a bulging knot of bark and hoist herself up into the crooked canopy, the way she did at the park one recent afternoon, until she was too high in the oak, too afraid to descend on her own, resentful that I had coaxed her to climb in the first place, though I knew beforehand of her skittishness in such matters.

Only I don’t say all that, just the part about the twisted branches of an old tree.  I do contort my fingers in the air, though, a gesture my daughter imitates.

“Gnarled,” she says. “That’s a good word because it sounds like what it is.”

We smile, understanding, I think, how some words put down roots.

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So you described the word as someone would who was reading a book of poetry about all those desolate things… I wonder how she would describe it back, given she was reading a fantasy novel? Maybe you should give her equal blog space.