Syzygy (SIZ-eh-gee): Either of two points in the orbit of the moon when the moon lies in a straight line with the sun and the earth. As in an eclipse.

When I was very young, my mom enjoyed solving crossword puzzles. She knew more obscure words than I thought it was possible to know. But even she would be stumped now and then. That’s when her dictionary came out.

I loved that book.

It wasn’t huge in height or width, but it made up for that in thickness and weight. It was the fattest book we owned. At that time, it was the fattest book I saw anywhere.

I loved to just sit and read that dictionary. It was already old when I started reading it. It was hard-bound and covered in a green cloth with embossed lettering. The cloth was worn at the corners and the edges, and shiny in places from the handling.

It smelled of tobacco smoke (both parents smoked) and age. It had the most amazing words in it.

Mostly, I would begin reading at the back. I loved the letter Z. I still do. We had a parakeet, so I was totally delighted to find the word “zygodactyl.” Where most birds have three toes forward and one toe back, parrots (and some tree climbing birds) have two toes forward and two toes back. Zygodactyl describes that arrangement. I was also delighted to find the letter Y in the word where you might ordinarily expect the letter I to be. There were more words beginning with the letter Z than I imagined there might be.

Zyzzyva (ZIZ-eh-veh) Any of various tropical American weevils, often destructive to plants. A nearly “perfect” word but for the letter A at the end. Zwitterion (ZWIT-er-ion) An ion carrying both a positive and negative charge, thus forming an electrically neutral molecule.

I was also particularly interested in words that had no vowels. Yes, the letters Y and W are sometimes considered vowels. But not by me. I suppose, though, that a case could be made for the letter W.

Consider the word “sweet.” Say this out loud:  sue ooh eat. Now say it fast, sort of running it together.

Making my way through the dictionary back to front, it wasn’t long before I got to the letter S and I found the word “syzygy.” It was a “perfect” word. It contained a Z. It had no vowels. Plus it had a sort of symmetry.

Fast forward, many, many years later and I found myself needing a name for the jewelry making company I was starting. The memory of Mom’s dictionary came to the rescue and “SyZyGy Jewelry” was born.

As a child, not only did I like the word itself, I liked what it defined. So when I needed a logo for the website I had created, I created this one:

I’ve kept that logo over the years and it has served to tie together my endeavors. It is on the title page of all of my novels. It is the logo on my blog. And it continues to symbolize my jewelry making ethic.

It is the idea of disparate parts falling together to create something amazing.

SyZyGy.

Images courtesy of The Planetary Society and A-Z Quotes, respectively.

Writing is not my only passion, I also make jewelry. Please visit my home page and hover over SyZyGy Jewelry for stories about my jewelry making journey.