When Words Have Meaning

Every now and again I run smack-dab into the living, breathing definition of a word. It's not a typical occurrence, but it happens often enough that my faith in language cannot be utterly lost. (Lost, I say, despite the seemingly constant, unforgivable sins against language and all things verbal so often committed by...well...just about everyone, be these sins written or spoken.)

This morning I ran into one of those definitions. Well, okay, I didn't run into it--I heard it coming from about thirty feet back as I sat in the quiet of St. Joseph's up on Capitol Hill after Mass this morning. I have three Hail Mary's left to go in my rosary. I hear the door at the main entrance creak open and then swing shut, but I pay it no mind, as people are always coming and going in the churches in D.C. Then I hear footsteps which defy the traditional description of "heavy footsteps." This person sounds like he's rehearsing for his lead role in Babar's Halloween celebration. I half expect the entire floor of the 100-year-old building to cave in beneath him. He walks with a preponderous "HEEL -- TOE -- HEEL -- TOE,'' so it's impossible to miss either part of the foot as it hits the floor. (Just for comparison's sake, most people's gait sounds like this: "HEEL, toe, HEEL, toe," so the noise of the upper foot hitting the floor is barely heard. This fellow clearly wanted his toes to get as much credit as his heels.)

On he came. Very, very slowly. Mind you, St. Joseph's is a small church, no more than 30 or 35 pews long. But it must have taken him five whole minutes to get from the back to the front of the building. Then again, in all fairness, if I were plotting out each footstep so carefully I'd probably take a little while getting anywhere myself. At last he passed by my pew (I sat about four pews from the front), and I snuck a peak at him.

I hardly know what I expected, but he wasn't it. A thin, stooped older man of normal height (no taller than 5'10"), his hair gray and curling wildly around his head, a scowling profile (which, I discovered when he turned around at the front of the church to head back, was part of an equally scowling face), carrying a plastic red cup which I pray, hope, and assume contained water. The pace never changed. "HEEL -- TOE -- HEEL -- TOE" he continued to the cantor's podium and scowled at it; reached inside, grabbed some papers, scowled at me, and began his long journey back to the entrance of the church.

I heard him clump through the vestibule; a pause in the constant footsteps, and some keys jingled. A door creaked open, and the same footsteps began to ascend to the choir loft, the same HEEL -- TOE continuing unremitting on each step. "He must be the organist," I thought. The footsteps continued above my head now, accompanied by rustling papers, keys jingling, and the organ bench being scraped along the wooden floor.

I thought, "Oh good. No more footsteps--we'll have some music."

No such luck. The footsteps made their plodding way back to the choir loft stairs; descended; paced the vestibule; then began the long trek back to the front of the church.

And an old line of poetry from my school days (oh so long ago) popped into my head: "...and went gallumphing back."

So there it was--the living, breathing, scowling definition of the word immortalized in Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwock." there's no getting around it: I have seen (and heard) "galumph."