Namaste

When I went to bed last night, I hadn't the slightest idea what I'd write about for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Today is N. "No." Maybe "Never." Definitely something "Negative."

I was tired. I'd spent the day in a hospital ER with my aged father. We were under a Winter Storm Warning with the promise of a two- or three-day snow event. Seven to fourteen inches of the white stuff for our Denver suburb. April is the Second Snowiest Month in Colorado.

A good sleep and waking wrapped "in my sweet baby's arms" with that tell-tale white, early morning snow-light seeping through closed blinds and I had a smile and today's N-word.

Namaste. (NAH-məs-tay)  According to Wikipedia, it's a respectful Hindi greeting meaning "I bow to the divine in you."

Yesterday, as my husband and I were heading home, by way of our favorite Mexican restaurant. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. Anyway, there was a Jeepish vehicle ahead of us with all kinds of stickers on its backside. One touting pet adoption, another outdoor recreation, a "native" bumper sticker, one of those ecumenical bumper stickers like so:

              

By using the standard background for a              I've seen this one in several states
       Colorado license plate, the bearer proclaims       and I like it.                                            

their having been born in Colorado, a rarity.                                                               

And there in the middle of the spare-tire was the biggest. It said Namaste. Even without those magnificent Rocky Mountains rising in the near distance ahead of us, I knew I was in Colorado.

Words are my life! The language we speak, where we learned to speak it, and where we speak it now.

I'm from Oklahoma where license plates say "Native America." Native there refers to Native Americans -- Cherokee, Comanche, Cheyenne, Choctaw, and those are just the C-tribes. According to the the U.S. Census Bureau, Oklahoma has the second highest population of Native Americans of any State in the Union. (Behind California, because I know you wondered.)

Namaste is from those other Indians. I don't think I've ever seen "Namaste" stuck on the side of a vehicle in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma's not exactly The South. It's really more the Southwest. But it's definitely South of Colorado. So I say "y'all." I call my father "Daddy." I drink "pop." I jam words together --  at meal time I might ask "Jeet yet?" and a fellow Oklahoman might answer "No. Joo?" And we might have fried chicken or chicken fried steak. Or a burger. (McDonald's and its golden arches are the same everywhere.)

In Colorado, I've discovered green chili. That's a spicy stew of tomatillos, chili peppers, and pork.

When we lived in southeast Arkansas, they greeted everyone with "Hey," and ate the best fried catfish in the world.

I knew that one of our local police officers there in Crossett, Arkansas was originally from central Texas as soon as he talked about a "tank." He meant a body of water that Oklahoman's call a "pond." Here on the Front Range, Coloradans would call it a "lake."

Just thinking about the intricacies of languages and all the cultures across the world makes me happy.

Let it snow! Namaste, y'all.