My grandmother was the last person in our family who spoke the old language. It was a dialect from a village in the mountains that no one had been to in eighty years, a language that existed only in her memory and in the few words she’d taught me when I was a child. I’d sit at her kitchen table, the same table where she’d learned to cook from her mother, the same table where she’d taught my mother to make the dishes that tasted like a place none of us had ever been, and she’d speak to me in words I didn’t understand, words that sounded like the wind in the pines, like the stream that ran through the village she’d left when she was sixteen, like the sound of something that was disappearing. She’d say the words slowly, the way you say something when you’re trying to teach it to someone who might be the last person to hear it, and I’d repeat them, the way you repeat something when you’re not sure what it means but you know it matters. I learned a few words, enough to say hello, goodbye, I love you. But I never learned the language. I never learned the words for the things that mattered, the words for the mountains, the river, the village that was gone. And when she died, when I was twenty-three, the language died with her. There was no one left to speak it, no one left to teach it, no one left to hear the words that sounded like the wind in the pines, like the stream that ran through a place none of us had ever been.
I was forty-seven when I found the box. It was in my mother’s attic, the attic of the house where I’d grown up, the house where my grandmother had lived with us for the last years of her life. I was cleaning it out, the way you clean out a house when the last person who remembers the old things is gone, when there’s no one left to tell you what the box is, why it was saved, what it was waiting for. The box was small, wooden, the kind of box that had been made by someone who knew how to make things that would last. It was wrapped in a cloth that had been white once and was now the color of time, and when I opened it, I found a book. It was small, leather-bound, the pages yellowed and soft, the handwriting in a language I didn’t recognize but knew, the way you know something you’ve heard before, the way you know the sound of a voice you haven’t heard in years. It was my grandmother’s writing, the same handwriting that had filled the recipe cards in her kitchen, the same handwriting that had written my name on the cards she sent me when I was away at college. But the words were in a language I didn’t know. The words were in the old language, the one she’d spoken, the one she’d taught me a few words of, the one that died with her.
I sat in the attic for a long time, holding the book, looking at the words I couldn’t read, the words that sounded like something I’d heard a long time ago, something I’d forgotten, something that was waiting for me to remember. I turned the pages, slowly, the way you turn the pages of something that might fall apart if you turn it too fast, and I saw that the book wasn’t just a book. It was a dictionary. It was a record of the language my grandmother had brought with her from a village that no longer existed, a language that no one spoke, a language that was in my hands, waiting for someone to learn it. I closed the book, held it to my chest, and I felt something I hadn’t felt in years. Not grief, exactly, but something closer to responsibility. The language was in my hands. The words were in my hands. The things my grandmother had said, the words she’d taught me, the sounds that had been disappearing for eighty years—they were here, in this box, in this book, waiting for me to learn them.
I spent the next year learning the language. I found a linguist at the university, someone who studied dying languages, someone who could help me understand the grammar, the syntax, the structure of something that had been spoken for centuries and was now spoken by no one. I went to her office once a week, the book in my bag, the words in my head, the sound of my grandmother’s voice in my memory. I learned the words for the things that mattered. I learned the words for the mountains, the river, the village that was gone. I learned the words for the dishes my grandmother had cooked, the words for the tools she’d used, the words for the prayers she’d said. I learned the words for I love you, the words she’d said to me when I was a child, the words I’d repeated without understanding, the words I was finally learning to understand. I learned the language. Not perfectly, not the way my grandmother had spoken it, not the way it had been spoken for centuries in the village that was gone. But enough. Enough to say the words, to hear them, to know what they meant. Enough to keep them from disappearing again.
It was a Thursday night when I finally understood the last word. I was sitting in my apartment, the book open in front of me, the word I’d been trying to learn for weeks finally making sense, finally fitting into the grammar I’d been building, finally becoming something I could say, could hear, could hold. The word was for a kind of light, the light that comes at the end of the day, when the sun is low and the shadows are long and the world is the color of something that’s about to end. It was a word my grandmother had used when she talked about the village, about the evenings when the work was done and the family was together and the light was the way it was in a place that was home. I said the word out loud, the way I’d been saying words for a year, the way you say something when you’re trying to make it real. And when I said it, I felt something I hadn’t felt since I was a child, sitting at my grandmother’s kitchen table, hearing her say the words that sounded like the wind in the pines, like the stream that ran through a place none of us had ever been. I felt her. I felt the language. I felt the thing that had been waiting for me to find it.
That night, after I closed the book, after I turned off the light, after I sat in the dark with the word still in my mouth, the word for the light that comes at the end of the day, I did something I’d never done before. I opened my laptop, the same laptop I’d used to find the linguist, to translate the words, to learn the language that was dying, and I searched for something I’d never searched for. I’d never gambled. Not once. I’d spent my life being careful, being safe, being the kind of person who learns things, who understands things, who controls things. I’d spent a year learning a language that no one spoke, a language that was in my hands, a language that I was keeping alive by learning it. But that night, sitting in my apartment with the book on my desk and the word for the light in my mouth, I wanted to do something I couldn’t control. I wanted to do something that wasn’t about learning or understanding or holding on. I wanted to let go.
I found a site that looked legitimate. I decided to
sign up on the Vavada casino site, and I sat there for a long time, my hands on the keyboard, thinking about my grandmother, thinking about the language, thinking about the word for the light that comes at the end of the day. I deposited fifty dollars, which was nothing compared to what I’d lost, everything compared to the man I’d been. I started with slots, because slots didn’t require me to think, didn’t require me to pretend I was in control. I lost ten dollars, lost another ten, lost another. I was down to twenty dollars in about ten minutes, and I was about to close the laptop when I saw a game I hadn’t noticed before. A slot machine with a sky theme, sunsets and mountains and a light that was the color of something I’d been trying to name. I stared at it for a long time, the little graphic of the sky, the mountains, the light that was the color of the word I’d finally learned. I thought about my grandmother. I thought about the language. I thought about the village that was gone, the light that came at the end of the day, the word that had been waiting for me to learn it.
I put twenty dollars in the sky slot. I watched the reels spin, watched the sun set, watched the light change, and I didn’t care if I won or lost. I was there, in that moment, in my apartment, with the book on my desk and the word in my mouth, doing something I’d never done before, something that was just for me, something I hadn’t asked anyone’s permission to do. The reels stopped. The screen flashed. And then the sky filled with light, the light that was the color of the word I’d finally learned, and the balance on my screen started climbing. Free spins. Multipliers. A number that went up and up and didn’t stop. When it finally did, I was sitting at my desk with my laptop open, staring at a balance of just over nine thousand dollars.
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I sat there for a long time, and then I withdrew the money, all of it, and I closed the laptop and picked up the book and said the word again, the word for the light that comes at the end of the day. I used the money to start a foundation, a small foundation that documents dying languages, that records the words before they disappear, that helps people learn the languages their grandparents spoke, the languages that are in boxes in attics, waiting for someone to learn them. I used it to hire the linguist who’d helped me, to pay for travel to places where the old languages are still spoken, to record the voices of people who are the last to speak them, to keep the words from disappearing. I used it to teach the language my grandmother spoke, the language that was in the book, the language that was in my hands. I teach it now. Once a week, in a classroom at the university, I teach the language that no one spoke, the language that was dying, the language that I’m keeping alive by teaching it. I teach the words for the mountains, the river, the village that is gone. I teach the word for the light that comes at the end of the day. I teach the words my grandmother taught me, the words she learned from her mother, the words that have been spoken for centuries and will be spoken for centuries more, because someone found them in a box and learned them and taught them to someone else.
I still have the account. I still play, sometimes, on nights when I’m sitting in my apartment, the book on my desk, the words in my head, the language I’m keeping alive. I use the Vavada casino site that I discovered that night, and I play a few spins, a few hands, a few minutes of letting go. I don’t play to win. I play to remember that night, the night I lost forty dollars and found a word I’d been looking for my whole life. I play to remind myself that the things we hold onto aren’t the only things that matter, that the things we let go of can come back, that the language my grandmother spoke, the language that was dying, the language that was in a box in an attic, is alive now, in my mouth, in my hands, in the words I teach to people who want to learn them. I think about my grandmother sometimes, when I’m teaching, when I’m saying the words she taught me, when I’m watching people learn the language that was hers, that is mine, that will be someone else’s someday. I think about the night I let go, the night I put twenty dollars on a sky slot and watched the light change. I think about the word I finally learned, the word for the light that comes at the end of the day, the word that was waiting for me to say it. I say it now. Every day. I say it in the classroom, in the apartment, in the quiet moments when I’m remembering the woman who spoke a language no one else spoke, who taught me the words I didn’t understand, who left me a box and a book and a language that was dying, that I’m keeping alive. I say the word, and I hear her voice, the voice that sounded like the wind in the pines, like the stream that ran through the village she’d left, like the sound of something that was disappearing, that I found, that I’m holding, that I’ll pass on, the way she passed it to me, the way I’ll pass it to someone else, the way the light comes at the end of the day, the way the word is spoken, the way the language lives.
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