All the Words We Know: a book review, of sorts…

September 15, 2025November 17, 2025 / Apple Hill Cottage / 4 Comments

Dear friends and readers, WordPress just notified me that my subscription is about to expire. My first post on this blog was May 22, 2012. That’s a long time ago! But my last post here was in July…So I’ve decided that I can no longer afford the expense for an on-again/mostly off-again blog. This will be my last post. And when you read it, you will understand why. Perhaps some other time, I’ll write again. But it will be in a different format. Thank you all for reading all these years. Stay hopeful. Stay grateful. Stay humble.

It’s never good to be in a rush at the library. But there i was, with only twenty minutes before an appointment and books to be returned, so i didn’t have much time to choose. The obvious selections are there by the circulation desk–six long rows of new books, faced out, so one can easily judge by the cover. The title? The splashy artwork? The author’s name?

The last two out of three books that i selected from these shelves have been winners, so the odds seemed pretty good. And this title jumped out: All the Words We Know by Bruce Nash. Never heard of him. Seemed to be a cozy mystery with an old lady on the cover. But it was the title that drew me in–All. The. Words. We. Know.

i have always loved words. Always have i loved words. Words i have always loved.

reading. writing. poems. novels. scrabble. word-games. magazines. books. libraries. bookshops. stories. lists. talking. thoughts. journals, crosswords. so, yes, give me All the Words We Know… Due in three weeks.

Only later, in the evening, as i opened it to read the blurb, did i realize that it was about a woman with dementia in a nursing home where residents are dying suspiciously. She has up days and down days, so sometimes she can remember what she knows, and sometimes she forgets what she should remember.

It’s not the subject i would have chosen. i closed the book. i shut my eyes. i should have known a book about old ladies and words wouldn’t be my kind of book.

Words are in such short supply here these days. These days words are in such short supply here. Here there is such a short supply of words.

My husband is losing his words.

He was always a man of few words. But the words he had were kind words, good words, sweet words, and now there is silence. and struggle. the silent words float up into the clouds and fall back down like rain from my eyes.

And so. Do i really want to read a whole novel about someone else losing their words and forgetting?

i decide to try the first few pages and see how i feel. Yes. This is why i’ve mostly been reading happy-ending-escapist fiction.

Rose (at least she thinks that is her name) is funny. If she forgets a word, instead of silence, she just throws another word in there. (Word Salad, anyone?) And since she is not running the country, it’s humorous. The elevator is the revelator, and next to it are the Fiery Escape stairs. There’s Angry Nurse, the Scare Manager, and the fellow in the wheelchair who doesn’t live there. In the cafeteria are pictures of sharks on the walls, and there are meatballs every night for dinner. The pictures on her whatitsname are pictures of the Dresser family–her son, her daughter, her granddaughters, and her two husbands, one of whom has his head torn off in the photo.

But all is not right at the nursing home. Her best friend, who cheats at Scrabble, is found dead in the parking lot from falling out her window. Rose loses her own beautiful room–with the window overlooking a garden to a room with the window overlooking a parking lot. And the man who takes her old room dies mysteriously after she has visited him one evening and held his hand. Maybe.

Rose’s musings take the form of disjointed thoughts, word play, puns, and occasional brilliance. Sometimes I stopped and read a paragraph out loud just for the joy of it. Here’s an excerpt from her thoughts after her room is downgraded.

“When they murder me, when they push me out this window and I am on my back in the parking lot with my head broken staring at the sky, I will be wearing a nice pantsuit. Pant suit. Pants suit. I like to look my best. The Scare Manager looks his best too, I’ll give him that. He makes an effort. If he murders me, at least we will both look the part. He looks quite handsome, in fact. I don’t think it’s just the new medication. Although I can’t be sure, obviously. As well as his expensive gold watch, he wears a shiny new leather jacket. And pants, of course. Not leather pants, but pants. He would not murder me with no pants on. Would not, with no pants on, murder me. That would be unprofessional. That would not be Best Practice. That would not meet Benchmarks.”

In her own broken way, Rose solves the mystery, brings the villains to justice, heals her family, and, yes, gets her own nice room with the big window back. Her own back window in the nice big room. And here’s what Rose has to say about it all:

“Things never change, until they do. Nothing ever happens, then things happen very quickly. It’s about time. Everything about this place is different, even if it isn’t. Everyone seems happier, about their room at least, or about the wall that they sit against in their wheelchair, or whatever. None of us may have much more in our accounts, but what we have at least flows in a new direction. One day recently there was a quiz night, and someone got an answer right. There is even some talk of the meatballs having improved.”

The thing is, this book made me laugh. Losing your words isn’t funny. Until it is. Maybe, just maybe, i need to have a different attitude. It’s about the sun glaring in your eyes. Or your eyes glaring at the sun. You can shut your eyes and enjoy the warm, or you can go blind glaring at it. If only i could remember this thought, instead of forgetting it when i need to remember.

But i will say, along with Rose — to enjoy this book, you really do need to like words. You do need to really like words to enjoy this book.

The End
of This.
The Beginning
of Something New.

Connect

November 10, 2014November 11, 2014 / Apple Hill Cottage / 5 Comments

think before speaking
listen to really hear
keep the mouth shut tightly —
in silence
the connection is loud and clear.

Gratitude for my man and his quiet ways

98. Holding the phone next to your heart

February 26, 2014October 20, 2014 / Apple Hill Cottage / 23 Comments

The orange phone has made it into previous posts. We inherited some kitschy items with the cottage, and in 10. Clara’s Kitsch, I conducted a poll to discover readers’ favorites. The orange phone won by two votes. Several readers suggested we hang it in the bathroom by the water closet.

Holding the phone next to your heart

Mr. H.C. doesn’t remember having this orange phone at his childhood home; he says their kitchen was turquoise and they had a black wall phone. So Clara and Joe must have picked out the orange phone especially for the 70s orange decor of the cottage. But they transferred their telephone number from that black wall phone. 627-5590. It’s the number I remember calling (even though I wasn’t allowed to call boys…) It’s the number on the orange phone.

I still have a nice square foot section of this wallpaper to frame and hang somewhere…

Found this photo on E-Bay — it’s for sale for $60.

The phone at our childhood house was a green desk phone that sat right outside the kitchen. It was the number one public area of the house, and there was no such thing as a private phone call. Mom would sit at the chair with her morning coffee and talk to her friends. We three girls would sit with our cokes and talk to friends in the evening. I remember when our original phone number (1696-L) was changed to 627-5804, but we only had to dial the last five digits because everyone in town had the same first three numbers. My dad transferred this number when he moved to his apartment in town — that was his phone number until the day he died…

We had a party line because we lived in the country. Alvin, the teenaged boy on the next hill always hogged the phone; he and his girlfriend would do their homework in silence every evening from 7 until 8:30. By the time I was in high school and talking to Mr. H.C. on the phone, the party line was gone and the only people who complained were my sisters, who were waiting impatiently for their turn. Dad would just shake his head and mutter, “What if I want to use the phone sometime?” We would just laugh, because Dad hardly ever talked on the phone. And if he needed to make a Very Important Call, he just said, “Get off the phone.” And. We. Did.

My grandparents had a “candlestick” phone (627-5305) on a telephone desk outside their kitchen. This was an antique phone even when I was a kid. My grandma Carrie had suffered hearing loss from diphtheria as a kid, and she always wore a hearing aid — the old fashioned kind that had wires and a transmitter that amplified sound. When she talked on the phone, she held the ear piece next to her heart where she wore the amplifier. It looked odd, and I was fascinated by watching her talk on the phone. She explained one day, after I was caught staring, that they kept the old fashioned phone because it was easier for her to manipulate. Then she smiled. “I only talk to people I care about,” she said. “And I carry their words next to my heart.”

I love technology (mostly) and I love my IPhone. And here in the teens of the new century my phone matches my kitchen as well.

And chances are I would rather text you than call you on the phone. Saves time, u no. But listen to what we are saying here. Are fifty-seven texts better than one conversation? We are communicating more and saying less, reduced to emoticons and abbreviated phrases.

Orange phone in living room The orange phone was hanging around on the wall in the living room until we took it down a few weeks ago when we moved the ovens and began the rehabilitation of that wall. I think I will hang it up again somewhere in the cottage — maybe next to that framed section of kitschy kitchen wallpaper — just for memory’s sake. But it will be a silent phone, only good for remembering.

Why is it that I can remember those old phone numbers when I can’t even remember the phone number I had at my last house. Oh, well, it MIGHT have to do with advanced age, but I think American society used to have a permanence that just isn’t there anymore. We cast-off, trade-in, move on.

It’s a throw-away world. Our phones. Our phone numbers. Our words. Sometimes I would be better off just to shut up. To listen. To call someone up just to hear their voice. And carry their words next to my heart.