APRIL 11, 2021 – Today is my oldest sister’s birthday, or as she’d call it, “the anniversary of her birth,” which is what it’s called—with syntactical correctness—in the Anglican (Episcopalian) Common Book of Prayer. My three sisters and I remember this form of “Happy Birthday!” from our upbringing. Kristina is the one who remains a devout Episcopalian—and insistent on proper lingual comportment.
I remember an occasion decades ago when our family was gathered at our summer cabin. Kristina, a year or two out of college, was in the process of losing yet another game of checkers. Fiercely competitive in matters involving the intellect, “Nina,” as she’s often called, began to . . . cry. Our younger sister Jenny, five years Nina’s junior, and reliably reassuring, blurted out, “That’s okay, Nina. You still have your vocabulary to fall back on.” All of us laughed—including Nina, her own sense of humor always close to the surface.
When it comes to language, Kristina’s unrivaled command reaches far beyond mere words—meaning, spelling, and most notably, their felicitous deployment. Her expertise extends to grammar, syntax, and pronunciation. She wields an editor’s pen with the flair of a sword-wielding Julie d’Aubigny. If you should write to her (Nina, not Julie, who’s been dead since 1707), triple-check before hitting “send.”
And be sure to close it with “Love.” I was once chided for having omitted that most precious word in Nina’s grandly expansive vocabulary.
Nina is love personified—she loves and in turn, is loved, by more people than I could number in an afternoon of counting. In family and friendships she’s rich beyond compare. This is because she gives so generously to others—in heart, mind, soul, and self.
Her love for other people—her late husband Dean; daughters Hillary and Erica; siblings; nieces and nephews; in-laws; multiple circles of friends close and near, far and wide—is framed by her deep love for art, French, aesthetics, music—she’s a professional violinist—natural wonders, and literature, most particularly, poetry . . . impressive volumes of which she has committed to memory. And Nina wouldn’t be Nina without ice cream, a long, daily, rigorous walk, and . . . a diurnal Level IV crossword puzzle.
It shouldn’t surprise you to know that Kristina was a high school debate champion and spelling bee star or that she’s a tour de force at Scrabble—maintaining a loose-leaf binder summarizing her victories, not merely by score but by words.
I thought about Nina yesterday evening while I watched The Professor and the Madman, the film starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn based on Simon Winchester’s book by the same (American) title. In my list of Nina’s “loves,” I forgot to mention “movies.” I must inquire if she’s seen and read the story behind the Oxford English Dictionary. You can be sure she owns a copy of that bible of our language—and that it’s not some sleeping lodger upon a forgotten shelf.
In my own words—and hers, “Happy Birthday, Kristina, and Beaucoup Felicitous Reciprocations!”
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
