F-Words: Reframing words through a different lens. (2025)

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-5089-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-5088-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024914712

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 09/17/2024

Prologue

Family

First

Fly, Flying, Flies

From

Fine

Fortuitous

Farewell

Fool/Foolish

Frugal

Prologue

I have been told that many people don’t read the prologue of a book. I’m hoping you read this. I’ll try not to make it too long.

Sometime in 2022 after a Sunday night family zoom, I hung up and said, F*#!-in Family. I don’t swear much at all, and thus that word is here in the prologue not completely spelled out. (By the way, I love my family!)

That conversation spurred the writing of this book. I had had no plans to write a book about F-Words, and yet have enjoyed this process tremendously.

There is no pattern or reason to the order the words appear in this book. Neither do they connect from one to the other. You might read something that was written at Christmas followed by something in late autumn.

They are simply words that begin with the letter F, that either were suggested to me, or meant something to me at a specific moment in time. (This is how FROG wound up in the book!)

What that means is, you can start anywhere. The beginning. The middle. The end. Or, anyplace in between. I would imagine what means something to you today might mean more, or less, in a month or a year. I would like to think that these writings are thought provoking enough that you use the spaces provided to interject your own thoughts.

Hopefully, if you are part of a study group or book club, you can use this for great discussions.

I really want to take a bit of space to thank so many who helped me. When I asked for art and interpretations of the words, you helped! The artists range from friends older than myself to my great niece who is about 10! The imagery is their interpretation of what the words mean to them. When I wrote about windows and posted it online, I got photos of over 100 windows! And, yes, ‘window’ starts with a w, but not in French ! When I didn’t know how to convert a pdf to a jpg, I had many friends offer to help. When this author needed to write about herself in third person, others gave me ideas.

Whether you entered my life as a child, or from Up With People, from church, from family, from work, or any other place, I love and appreciate you all! Thank you for helping me get this completed and out to the world!

The English language is full of words we use many ways. Other countries have words that start with F that aren’t even part of our lexicon in English. I hope you enjoy my stories and insights and share with your friends and family! (Both GREAT F-Words 32904.png )

PS. After hearing a bit from the publisher I have learned that some of the images are not quite print quality. However, I decided to be flexible, the images are just fine, I am finished and moving forward!

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Family

This morning, I was counting how many words I had completed - or rather - so far for this book, and I realized I had not said anything about family. Since this whole idea started with a zoom call with my family, I decided I’d better get to work on it.

Such a simple word, yet such a complex word. The quick thoughts in my head are about what we call immediate family. Those who we are connected to genetically. My parents, grandparents, siblings, kids, cousins, grandkids, etc. These are the people who share skin tones, eye color, straight or curly hair, varicose veins, baldness, arthritis, cancer tendencies. These are those people! (Suddenly the word immediate seems like it should be removed from the earlier sentence in this paragraph.)

I feel pretty darned lucky in the category. Great parents who loved each other forever and brothers who I get along with most of the time. And, now for many years, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, and oh yes, my own and the one I married into. This is where it gets complicated. We don’t choose where we are born, or what that life is. It just happens. However, at the next stage, we do make choices. And then, sometimes we have children again, a little bit of a choice but often very random. We don’t pick kids off a shelf like candy at Halloween. (It might feel like it as the years go by, but seldom does that happen.)

My eldest brother Dan and I are very different. Mostly I have to explain what I am saying and thinking to him several times before it computes. I have this idea that because we are in our sixties, he should already know what I am thinking. He tells me that is NEVER going to happen. But those differences haven’t prevented us from having a relationship over the years. I have grown to appreciate his no nonsense way of doing life, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say he appreciates the way I live. (He isn’t here to add in his thoughts!)

Ken is the brother just under me. Ken left our little town at a very young age and never moved back to Ohio. He has always been deeply emotional, even to the point where I think as a young person he struggled. He is a writer, although not like me. He is a technical writer, so his stories are long and detailed and involved, and sometimes create angst for me. He knows this and now, he often will say something like, How do I make this NOT a Ken story? But those details work for him in his job that pays money, so far be it from me to correct.

Eric is my youngest brother. He is probably the most like me from a personality perspective. His brain remembers things the way mine does. We are the people who have memories …. albeit 7 years apart… that we both recall. And, as we have been working on a podcast together, I have learned that this youngest brother of mine is also WAY more into details than I am, so I let him handle that part of things.

Children. Ah children. They are born into our lives and we often as parents have great plans for them. We create and envision who they will become and how their lives might look. And then, they don’t. And then, they aren’t. And then, life leads them on paths we could never envision. They don’t respond to things the way we would want them to. They make choices that make us cringe. They do things that make us proud. And they do things that we could never even have imagined. Those choices and decisions lead them on a path that can make parents - okay, can make this mom - scared, sad, worried, angry, and hurt. Mostly though, our children allow us to teach and guide and always have hope and love for those who are genetically part of us, even in the midst of all of the strife. Children are a gift and a challenge. Some families are made up of those adopted from around the world; or those that a second marriage has allowed us to join with in our world. Yes, I could go on and on here and I am sure that you, the reader, have your own understanding of how this exists in your personal life.

I know that not everyone has children. Not everyone has parents and a childhood they enjoyed. Not everyone has cousins. Family takes on such different forms. For many, they have a furry family who they hold close to their hearts and who they care for throughout their lives. (Oh, and vice versa, we all know those furry friends also take care of us!)

Best of all, we have the chosen family. We have the ability to make friends who become family. I have a church family. I have a book club family. I have Up with People alumni who are like family. I have sisters in these groups, none of whom are biological, but who know my deepest darkest secrets, all the joy and the grief. I have a Real Estate family. I have a community of French speakers who I call family. I have my ex-husband’s family, many who remain close to me. We have the opportunity throughout life to meet, learn, grow, share, and love those who may have been worlds apart and now are as close as those parents and siblings and cousins who share our genetics.

Family is the way our word looks in English. And it is similar in many languages: Familia, Famiglia, Famille, Familie - the Spanish, the Italian, the French, the German, the Danish, and the Dutch all have an F word that is their word for family. Clearly, around the globe, the spelling and pronunciation of that word changes. And yet, however the word may change, the meaning does not.

So the good, the bad, the ugly; family encompasses it all. We as humans are allowed to wake up each and every day and become part of something, somewhere. We are allowed to nurture and grow relationships that lead into the feeling of family.

I am so grateful for my family, including all the mess and the grace extended!

How will you approach your family today? Who will you call to tell them you love them? What fences will you work to mend? Who will you choose to be family with?

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First

As I write these words I think of the song from The Sound of Music, Let’s start at the very beginning / A very good place to start…

So here we are with first. I think immediately of how kids vie to be the first in line. How they want to be the first to be chosen for a team. I think about being first in the class and some of the four or five syllable words like salutatorian and valedictorian which seem to bring so much glory.

Being Valedictorian is a big thing. Being first here means you get to give a speech. It means that even if you’re an introvert, you have to talk in front of a large crowd and you could have great anxiety! It can also mean scholarships to college. And, it can save you money.

What are the firsts you remember? Do you remember the first time you sang or played a solo? Do you remember your first kiss or your first date? Do you remember if either of those were too difficult or awful to even want to remember? If you are an actor, do you remember your first role? If you play sports, maybe you remember your first touchdown or home run, or the first race that you ran and won.

When I was a kid our church family had a lot of potlucks. Potlucks meant you lined up in some format and went through the kitchen of the workers home and filled your plates with delicious foods. Children always wanted to be first because it meant choosing what you wanted to eat and honestly, likely getting to the desserts before everyone else. My dad was typically the opposite. Dad would wait to be last in line so that he could take as much as he wanted of whatever was left. He didn’t have to think about what the others who came behind him might need or want. He liked almost all food, so being last to him made more sense than being first.

When planes crashed into the twin towers in NYC in 2001, the word first became synonymous with the firefighters, the rescue squads,

F-Words: Reframing words through a different lens. (2025)

Contents

Prologue

Family

First