Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy winning, too, just like the gamers who shout, “W00t! W00t!” I’ve never played games online, though, preferring to compete at the dining room table and engage in rowdy contests of Hangman and Scrabble. When I have no opponents to joust with, I battle the New York Times crossword puzzles. You’d think, being a writer, I could win a match. After all, I look up words in the dictionary daily and I’m never too far from my trusty friend, The Synonym Finder. The book is worn and torn because I’m always on the lookout for the right noun, verb or adjective.

I enjoy other people’s words, too, whether they’re on the page of a newspaper, magazine or book. Imagine being able to string together enough words in just the right fashion that your work could be called a best-seller. Now, that’s a wonderful word.

One of my favorite terms doesn’t easily fit into conversation. Ethnocentrism has stuck with me since a sociology course at Normandale College in the late 1990s. The oldest student in the class by about 30 years, I realized it would have been ethnocentric of me to feel that, because of my age and experience, I knew more or did anything better than the younger generation of students. That would have bordered on hubris, another word taught by the sociology instructor. Hubris is when your ego is your downfall. As my mother liked to say, when you end up with egg on your face.

Before online surfing, I bought a flip calendar that taught a new word every day. I’d repeat it to myself a number of times, then try to use it in conversation so it would become part of my vocabulary. Now, using a search engine, it is easy to locate Web sites that offer the same service. One such quest yielded the word excursive, an adjective that means wandering off or rambling. Something I tend to do. Ramble on about a subject I love—words popping into my head faster than I can write them down.

Audition, which we all know means a try-out, usually for a play or movie role, was on another site. Did you know audition is rooted in the Latin word, audire, and also means the act of hearing?

When Anu Garg, an immigrant from India, came to this country, he must have heard something special in the English words he was learning. Eight years ago, he founded wordsmith.org which teaches a new word a day to subscribers. An article in the New York Times says it “is arguably the most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace.” Katie Hafner’s story about Garg is titled, “A Word of the Day Keeps Banality at Bay.”

I looked it up. Banality is the act of being trite. Something I’ll try to avoid in the New Year. If I succeed, we can all shout, “W00t, w00t!”

We searched for the perfect tree with the perfect price tag. Sticker shock isn’t just for automobiles, we learned. Our budget rose as we shopped. “That one,” we finally said. I worried needlessly about fitting the nine-foot tree in our car. The waist-high carton slid easily in our mid-sized Malibu. How many pieces are there? I wondered. “We’ll see,” my husband said.

By the time we put sections A through E together, the tree was much bigger than it had looked in the store. “We have to return it for a smaller one,” I said. “But how will we ever get it back in the box?” My husband said not to decide until each of the branches was pulled apart. Raising my voice to frenzy level, I explained what any sane person could plainly see—it was too big for the room. “Let’s see,” he said. An hour later, when every branch fanned out and each needle was in place, he advised me to sleep on the decision. I did, awaking hourly in a panic.

In the morning, I poked my head into the living room and repeated that the tree was too over-sized for our house. Hubby announced his intention to get on the ladder and start looping the ribbons around the tree. I told him there wouldn’t be enough. He repeated his “let’s see” mantra and unrolled the spools of red and gold trim, suggesting I find the angel for the top. I wailed that the angel was too small to be nine-feet skyward. “Let’s see,” he said. Then he left for work, leaving me alone with a tree that had taken over the whole room and was about to crowd me out of the house.

That night, I said we should remove the garlands and get the tree back to the store. My husband decided to put ornaments on some of the top boughs—to keep the angel company “We’ll need binoculars to see them up there,” I said. He told me to wait and see.

Even though it would be added work to remove them before we returned the tree, when he hurried out the door to work the next day, I decided to hang a few things on lower limbs. Just to prove how silly they would look. Surely, my husband would come to his senses, disassemble the mighty oak and return it to the store. I hung angels a neighbor had given me, and a snowperson from a friend, alongside framed photos of our grandchildren. When it was dark outside, I plugged in the lights and stepped back to look at the gargantuan evergreen.

The bright bulbs made mirrored ornaments from my father twinkle and bells from my mother glimmer. They glowed through brightly-colored glass decorations created by my children. As memories of Christmases past enveloped the room, I called my husband. “It’s safe to come home,” I said. “The tree’s staying. In fact, I might just leave it up all year long.”

Which we should be. After all, I’ve known him since he was a darling eight-year-old when his father and I worked together. With children the same ages, his dad and I often shared their exploits and accomplishments. Nothing too telling, as we were only co-workers and married to others at the time. I remember the day his dad came to work excited to share the news it was his son’s birthday. He and his wife had given their

teen-ager Prince’s new movie, Purple Rain. “That’s expensive,” I said. He had nodded his head proudly.

Summers, our families were together at company softball games. There were potluck picnics, too, where we all chipped in for hot dogs. The kids went swimming in Bush Lake and everyone ate too much potato salad, cole slaw and brownies. Some of the adults drank too much beer. The day always ended with a softball game; kids and parents alike, running bases and chasing fly balls.

All this work-related togetherness didn’t prepare us to become relatives when my husband and I married years later during a blizzard. Weathermen had advised against travel and we worried about my husband’s son and his girlfriend who were driving from Florida for the occasion. We should have told them not to brave the elements but it was important all three of our children bless the union with their presence. No one had expressed any outrage, but still, you never know what emotions are bubbling under a cool demeanor. After the ceremony, we headed to a fancy dinner and family bonding.

I’ll admit: at first, I tried too hard. Tried to make us a big happy family, refusing to believe the word “step” was part of it. I envisioned merry Christmases, everyone singing carols around the tree and opening gifts. I arranged birthday celebrations at restaurants and brought party napkins and cake, trying to create a family with little kid celebrations for kids who were grownups. We all went skiing one year, visited Disney World another, both trips fraught with disaster. Once I let go of my starry-eyed notions, though, it became easier.

I’ve grown to love my husband’s son. I applaud his every accomplishment and ache for any unpleasantness he encounters. When he and his father meet for a yearly Cub’s game in Chicago, I cheer every home-run moment they share. When he scoured my newspaper columns searching for a Christmas gift idea and sent me a first edition of Death Be Not Proud, a book I had written was a favorite, I cried.

This weekend, he and his wife will be in Minnesota and we will celebrate his 40^th birthday at brunch. I still don’t know what to call him. Stepson feels so distant; yet son, an imposition. As for what he calls me, it isn’t important. When he and I spoke on Thanksgiving, he ended our phone conversation with “Love ’ya.” That’s all that matters, isn’t it?

When my husband and I lived in New Jersey in the 1970s, we were smitten with everything New York. Most weekends, we packed the children into the VW Bug and made our way through the Lincoln Tunnel to sightsee. We ate in Chinatown and Greenwich Village. We bought hot dogs and Italian ices from street vendors and visited the Central Park Zoo. We grabbed every bite of the Big Apple while we could and that included Broadway.

Our first show was a musical. We had no idea we were watching a phenomenon that would be turned into a movie starring John Travolta. The only tickets available in our price range had been in the back of the theater but still, the floor trembled as our dancing feet joined everyone else’s. No one could sit still. Grease was the word.

Tickets to a play about Sherlock Holmes were less costly. I secured front row seats on the aisle. When a bad guy dropped a knife on the floor and it skittered across stage and pointed right at us, our two grade-schoolers were wide-eyed. We knew it was a prop, didn’t we? During intermission, we ate peanuts, sipped colas and tried to solve the thrilling mystery.

I’d been introduced to the theater by my own parents when I was young—the Edyth Bush in Saint Paul, the Old Log Playhouse in Excelsior. When I was a high school freshman, I returned home from boarding school one weekend a month. Often, my parents met my bus in downtown Minneapolis. We ate spaghetti at the Di Napoli, then walked down the block to see a play. Those evenings, plus a fortuitous babysitting job that found me and my two charges in the balcony when Robert Preston marched through town in The Music Man, got me hooked.

I wanted my own children to love live performances, too. When they were very little and we were very poor, we attended free dress rehearsals at some of the local colleges. From there, we graduated to performances at the College of Saint Thomas and St. Catherine’s.

Broadway broadened our scope. By the time we returned to Minnesota to live, grease paint was in our blood. A Christmas Carol and Taming of the Shrew at the Guthrie beckoned. As did Hello, Dolly! with Carol Channing and many other plays at the Orpheum. Now, it is the grandchildren’s turn to fall in love. When my teenaged granddaughter whooped it up during Rent at the Ordway, so did I.

I may never return to Broadway, but I kicked up my heels to learn the strike was over. In an Associated Press article, 34 year veteran, Michael Van Praagh, said the settlement meant stagehands were “finally getting the respect we deserve on Broadway.” (How could there be a play without stagehands?) I clapped my hands for people like Steven Haywood and his wife, Claire. According to the AP story, the British couple was in New York for a 20th wedding anniversary celebration and had not known of the strike. It settled, though, and they were able to garner tickets to Hairspray, Chicago and more.

As Haywood said, “This is Broadway! It’s a part of New York. It’s the razzmatazz!” Well scripted. Cue the orchestra. Break into song. The curtain is up on the Great White Way.