X is for...

X is for..., watercolor on mixed media paper, January 8, 2012

When our children were very young, we taught them most of their vocabulary. As they approach adulthood, they've become the vocabulary teachers, and I just try to keep up. This will continue to be more and more challenging as long as every new technology requires its own vocabulary. By the time I figure out the new "everyday words," they're considered outdated. Sigh! The ONLY part of studying biology that I enjoyed was when we got to draw color pictures of cells. We didn't get to do that often enough, so I endured biology. X-Men have been around for decades, but as far as I'm concerned they did not exist before the recent batch of movies...and I'm as uninterested in them now as I was when they only inhabited comic books. I'm told that it's a guy thing, so my disinterest is understandable. Being unable to find an "X" color, I chose cross-stitch as X's color. Like other hobbies I've obsessed over, cross-stitching used to occupy much of my free-time. I've moved on as my eyesight has aged. X-rays really are fascinating, and every member of our family has had them taken multiple times in the past few years, as recently as last week. Sigh! My husband played xylophone in high school band. Including "chi-rho" is a bit of a stretch. It's not exactly an "X," but it looks like one. I studied Greek for two years in college. I wish I had kept studying it beyond college. "Chi" (the X) is the first letter of the Greek word for "Christ." "Rho" (the P) is the second letter of the same word. Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet and remind us of Christ's eternal nature (beginning to end) and His role as originator and culmination of all things (first to last). Lesson over. I hope I got it right! X is for Xbox, xylem, X-Men, X-stitch, x-ray, xylophone, and chi-rho (sort of).