Name that new baby
My friends have a new baby. Their first baby. A beautiful baby boy.
And like most parents-to-be, they gave serious thought to the weighty matter of naming this child. After all, a name is something we carry with us for life. It is a part of who we are.
My friends will call their son Ian David. And they will hold him close, making that low, humming sound all mothers and fathers make to show a child he is safe. And they will say to him, “Ian David, I love you more than anything,”
With each of my own pregnancies, I spent hours mulling over possible names. I kept a journal and every night I listed in it the day’s favorite candidates. I weighed the pros: names that would fit a brilliant future – against the cons: cruel school-yard taunts and nicknames that stick for life.
When I finally chose a name for each of my children, a name that carried with it all the hopes and dreams I held for them, I whispered it aloud, and let it echo in my mind. I heard my voice calling my baby, swaddling a new life with the sound – the carefully constructed daisy chain of vowels and consonants – of the name that I had given them.
Of course, knowing what I know now, I should also have rehearsed saying those names with a tinge of exasperation or impatience; through clenched teeth or hissed in a whisper. Or, from time to time, shouted in frustration or fear.
But how was I to know what was ahead?
Like most of our illusions about parenting, as the children grow, the sound of their name on our lips is, at times, very different from what we imagined.
Watching an infant girl sleep in her cradle, all pink skin and soft curls, it’s hard to imagine a time when we will cry out, “No, Mary Katherine! No biting!”
Gazing at a newborn boy, his head covered with peach fuzz, tiny fists clutching the satin trim of his blanket, there is not a clue there that in just a few years we might ask, “Thomas Michael, did you take that candy bar from the store?”
When they are born, while they still smell so sweet and soft, there is no indication that one day the shrill sound of the telephone might pierce the night and we will hear ourselves say to our child, “Honey, it’s OK. Stay where you are. I’m on my way.”
Little Ian David is fresh and new. So are his parents. Right now, when they speak his name it is a caress.
But those of us who are not so fresh, not so new, those of us whose children have learned to crawl and talk; to walk and then drive; to make friends and make excuses; to tell little white lies and tall tales, have learned that even when we call a child by name in a less than caressing tone of voice and say “No,” or ” You got yourself into this mess, now you’ll have to get yourself out of it,” or even “Right now I’m so angry I can’t see straight,” what we are really saying is exactly what we said to them on the day they were born: “I love you more than anything.”