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Finding a word with a gesture

Sometimes I think I don’t use my hands enough to explain things that I’ve forgotten. Hands are not word-blind like my lips sometimes are, and I could use a little help -especially if I feel stressed at the time. It’s embarrassing to come up blank when you’re in the middle of describing something; knowing that the word, the name, the concept will somehow find its way onto your tongue eventually, but only when you no longer need it, is little consolation. The conversation has probably already moved on to another topic, and anyway the listener has usually provided the needed word to fill the gap with a tiny resigned sigh.

When my occasional loss of the correct word first became evident to me, I’d explain it to myself (silently inside my head where I don’t actually have to use words) as a result of being stressed. Then, when Covid and its long-term consequences arrived, I thought perhaps I might be in the grips of ‘long Covid’. But I’d never had Covid, so I had to find another excuse. I mean the obvious one -my age- seemed too facile, and the problem, unlike my age, wasn’t always there. Anyway, I could usually come up with a different word that was perhaps less specific, or even invent a neologism that seemed a clever substitute.

But deep inside, I was worried that it bespoke something even more serious than the weight of years pressing down on me: it was a word beginning with ‘D’, I think, although it has now escaped me as I type. Or was it an ‘A’…? At any rate it will no doubt come to me when I go out for a walk.

Still, those little gaps are sort of like losing an expected button hole on your shirt when you’re dressing in a hurry. Things like that shouldn’t happen -at least that’s what Jeremy always tells me, although in different words each time he tries to explain it.

Jeremy is a retired teacher, and at our coffee meetings with the guys in the Food Court, he still talks like he is in the front of a class. He can’t keep his hands still, even though one is often still attached to his cane, which thumps away on the floor when he wants to make a point. It doesn’t matter whether his free hand is scattering the sugar coating from his doughnut, or spilling drops of coffee on his lap, it still tries to emphasize something as if he were talking to the noisy students in the back row of his classroom.

And it’s not as if Jeremy isn’t old like me. He must be over 80, wears old-man clothes like unisex wide length palazzo pants from some downtown bargain counter, and often an over-washed and fading sweatshirt with a masculine disregard for any stains or wrinkles that escaped his morning mirror’s notice. “No,” he usually explains, gesticulating with his free hand, “gestures can change how and what you think about something by occupying space along with your words. And of course, they can help you remember words by describing them physically…”

“Is that why you always spill your coffee whenever you talk, Jer?” Lewis, a retired judge, usually remained silent, although his eyes were always alert to nuances. I think he was likely reacting to the dark present from Jeremy that I could see on his own scrupulously clean and pressed blue jeans. He didn’t gesture, though.

Jeremy carefully replaced his cup on the table, leaned his cane on his leg, and mea culpa’d his fingers together in a silent namaste. “Sorry,” he explained, after throwing his hands up as if in surrender. “The gestures seem to carry me away… They help me to think anyway, and I suspect they help others understand what I mean and how important, or not, it is for me. My hands are my words…”

I looked at him for a moment, not sure if I really believed what he was getting at. “I suppose you mean that gestures can also substitute for words if you can’t remember them, eh?”

He shrugged theatrically in reply and stared at me in a teacher-moment, evidently waiting for me to say something. “Did you understand my shrug, G?” he finally asked.

I thought about it for moment, then nodded. “You just answered me I guess…” I muttered, embarrassed to have to be asked.

“We all use gestures,” he said, smiling as if there was hope that I might someday be a bright pupil. “Most thoughts can have sounds; not all words have gestures, though. Sometimes you just have to make one up on the fly.” He had a quick sip of what was left of the coffee in his cup, then glanced again at the stain on Lewis’ pants. “Once conceived and performed, they’re hard to forget, because the movement becomes the memory: we talk with our bodies, too…”

Lewis smiled at this homespun philosophy. “We use something similar in the courtroom as well, G. It’s one of the reasons judges have a gavel and special costume: it reminds the court who is in charge without having to say it…”

“I never thought of it like that,” Jeremy added. “But in the old days, I used to smack a wooden ruler on my desk to get the class to pay attention to me.”

“Fine and good, but how are gestures like that going to help me to remember words when I need them, eh?” I asked it with a sigh and a dismissive wave of my hand.

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Gestures are not just descriptive, they’re also punctuation -little pauses that give you time to organize the rest of the sentence; time to let your body talk, instead of always depending on your mouth…”

I smiled, then shook my head slowly. “I suspect you’re both just being nice to me, but I’m still worried I may have a condition like the one that ended the career of…” I blanked on the name. Damn! “You know… that tough guy in those Hollywood action films…” I threw my hands in front of me in exasperation. “Remember, he was in that one about the building that got taken over…” My hands tried to describe the scene. Suddenly the actor’s name appeared in my mind like the head of a seal surfacing in the water. “Bruce Willis!”

Jeremy and Lewis glanced at each other, then nodded simultaneously with amused little grins on their faces. “Diehard…” Jeremy whispered to himself, “1988…”

I attempted an eyeroll, although I knew I wasn’t as practiced at it as Jeremy. “Come on, guys; I would have got the name without the gestures, eh? Well, eventually anyway.”

Jeremy blinked slowly; Lewis merely watched me, no doubt from the lofty heights of the bench to which he’d been so accustomed in his courtroom. “By then, we’d probably have moved on to a different subject, G…” Jeremy added, probably thinking of the ruler back in his old classroom.

I had to smile at the two of them retreating, however briefly, into their respective happy places. It felt good to finally join them with a simple gesture of my own…

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