The first meme I've succumbed to in a long time

Here's the premise: my friend Gillian Polack said at the end of her iteration, "Reply to this meme by yelling (or any other form of writing) 'Words!' and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ [or other blog, one assumes] and explain what they mean to you."

Here are the words that remind Gillian of me:

Language
I love this one. Language is my superpower. I love using words, and I've made my living at it for decades, one way or another. I was literally one of those kids who read the dictionary for fun. I pick up foreign languages more easily than I deserve, considering the really paltry amount of effort and diligence I put into it. Words are shining, scary, beautiful, beloved, magic things, and language is the power to use them to create meanings that loom like mountains and sound like storms and small, soft whimpers.

Dreams
Interesting, because I do and I don't consider myself a dreamer. To myself, I feel quite practical, although I do have aspirations, and I don't deny a certain fondness for whimsy and bizarre works of the imagination. I guess you could categorize those as dreams.

Naan
Mmmmmm, soft, chewy, delicious naan. Especially Kashmiri/Peshwari naan, with the fruit and the coconut and the ghee and...mmmmm.... When I was pregnant with my daughter, I suffered dreadfully from morning sickness (how deflating to find out from my midwife that my agonies were only on the bad side of normal — and pity the women who really do legitimately suffer from it). One of the few things I could eat without courting disaster was Indian food. Margaret loves naan, possibly because of her earliest experiences of it. I've also shared naan with Gillian, and that creates a bond.

Family
Ah. Gillian knows this about me: family is so, so, so important to me. Number-one important. It's something we share: joy in our families, in being part of a family, in remembering family members whom we miss because of distance, time, or loss. Family ties are sacred. Caring for those ties, and healing them when they're damaged, is a sacred calling.

Thought
Thought brings a lot of the other words together. It's the means by which I use language, it's the way I advance my dream, it's the tool I use to hone impulses and intuition into story. Clear thinking has always been just about the highest value in my family: you are admired if you think well and skillfully; less so if you are intellectually lazy or slipshod. Not sure how thought ties in with naan, except that I'm now thinking about naan and will not rest until I get me some. It may take days; it's not readily available in Thirroul, where I live. And I don't have the right kind of oven to make it myself. Thought is the bread of art. Or something.

And now, I in turn make the offer: Reply to this meme by yelling (or any other form of writing) "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your blog and explain what they mean to you.