The Dictionary I Asked for at Four

When I was four years old, I asked my father if I could have his giant dictionary when he died.

We were in our musty basement. The basement held old tools and mysterious boxes and smelled of damp concrete. I was frightened to venture downstairs by myself, afraid of spiders and cobwebs. There, among the clutter, World War Two history books and science fiction Analog magazines stood a behemoth of a book: Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition. This 1934 printing weighed nearly 13 pounds and contained over 600,000 words of almost 3,000 pages.

“I want that when you die,” I said.

My father looked at me, half-startled, half-amused. I still remember the smirk that played across his face.

 “Okay,” he said. “It’s yours.”

A strange little contract materialized. I did not know what death meant. I did not understand inheritance or books of that magnitude. But I wanted that one.

I did not love looking up words. I found it tedious. I was a “just tell me” kind of kid, quick to ask others instead of flipping through pages. 

So what was I asking for?

Maybe it was the weight of it. The authority. That one book could hold the entire world’s words. Perhaps I sensed before I had the vocabulary that I wanted to be part of the world of words.

It stayed with us for decades, that dictionary. That dictionary accompanied us through childhood and school. I grew up and became a writer. Not overnight, but inevitably.

The dictionary traveled, too. It moved from the basement to a prominent position in our small 1000-square-foot home. It returned to the basement when we moved. Then, when my husband and I married, the dictionary came along for all our moves. Finally, it lives in the basement of an office I shared with my son.

It always towered with quiet dignity, rarely opened but never forgotten; a symbol, maybe more than a tool. I told my son he could give it away, sell it, and donate it to someone who loves old books if he chooses to. It doesn’t matter anymore. Not the object itself.

What matters is what it always stood for: a love I couldn’t name at four. A love of meaning. Of putting things in their place through language.

That old book was a beginning.

And like many beginnings, it didn’t declare itself loudly. It whispered.

I didn’t become a writer because of that dictionary. But I held on to the idea that words mattered. That promise meant something. When you ask for something at four years old, and someone says yes, it sticks.

I don’t know if my father ever remembered that promise. But I did. And now, maybe, it’s time to release the weight of the book and carry forward what it taught me instead.

We are, in part, made by what we ask for before we know why. And if we listen closely, those whispers become part of our legacy.