Essay: How I Caught My Words
By Margaret Bingham
McAuliffe International School Student
My world shrunk when the pandemic started. Everything seemed smaller, including my house and my imagination. I moved halfway across the country just before the pandemic started. I lost touch with some of the most important friends I’ve ever had. Finding new friends in lockdown was a strenuous task. I became closed off and quiet. An opaque and somber fog blanketed my life. It dimmed the outgoing spark inside me until it was a dying ember. Without that light, I didn’t know how to see the truest parts of myself.
Fog is made of water. Some cultures figured out how to get water from fog with fog catchers. They put pots under trees and plants. When the fog rolls over them, it leaves droplets of water. The water would drip from the leaves to the pots. During a long period of despondency, I realized I had to learn what I could collect from the fog so that I could grow. I had to put out a couple different kinds of fog catchers to figure it out. But eventually, I learned to collect the true power of words. That discovery affected the rest of my life, even after the lockdown.
Words aren’t just consonants and vowels strung together, like dew on a spiderweb, to convey information. They are immeasurably more. Words are the way we understand our perceptions of the world. The way we formulate our most meaningful and our most groundbreaking ideas. They are strong enough to hold our most powerful convictions, our deepest beliefs, and even our darkest fears. They fan the fire of our burning curiosity. Words are how we evoke feelings. How we express our surging creativity.
My first fog catchers were books. Before I could collect my own words, I had to collect other people’s words. Those words gave me the light and warmth I’d been missing since that spark went out. I learned there are lots of ways to get the light I need to see myself and others. The first part of the pandemic left me with immense amounts of unfilled time. I couldn’t fill it all with reading. So I filled it with thought. Extensive pondering is another fog catcher. Pondering collected so many words, I swam through a deep and vast sea of ideas. Some thoughts were wavy and tumultuous, others glorious and shimmering.
In that fog, I not only collected my voice, I also caught my words. With those words, I formed my values, how I see the world, the way I think about things, and the way I want to express myself. I formed my perspective and those words held it. With new sources of light. I saw the world for how it was and how it can be.
The shrinking spaces seemed to grow as I nourished them with the words that captured my ideas. Words are fog catchers. They help me write fantastical stories that push at the limits of all aspects of reality. I have never been so prolific in my creativity. I know now if I ever need my imagination to grow, I just need to go out and catch more words.
Editor’s Note: The Denver Cherry Creek Rotary Club has sponsored an essay contest for six years at McAuliffe International Middle School. This year students were asked to write to their 18-year-old selves on the topic of what a year of COVID-19 has been like. A record 51 essays were submitted. Those were narrowed to five finalists, whose authors read them aloud during a Feb. 28 school event. Margaret Bingham’s essay won first place in the contest.