BetweenTheWords

Using specific descriptions when writing is akin to being specific when asking for what you want, or visualizing what you want and it is funny how everything comes full circle and lines up exactly when you want it to.  I am learning how to ask for what I want and the results are usually good so tonight my request is for everyone in my family to always say “goodnight.”

The days are gone when my husband, my daughters and I inhabited the same home and could yell goodnight from room to room (remember The Waltons?) but the need is still there for me.  I want to sleep well knowing that everyone in my family is safe and sound and in this age of technology this can be done without too much difficulty so at the risk of becoming an annoying mom, I will happily accept a text message, an email or Facebook message but my sleep is much more relaxed after I receive these messages of nightly good wishes.  Of course the telephone call is the best, hearing the voices from far off, sometimes equally exhausted, sometimes wide awake and in the midst of studying, but always welcome.  This is our tradition, our family tradition started by my mother.  I rarely missed a good night phone call to my mother in my later teen years, early adulthood and the calls continued after I was married, sometimes to the puzzled look of my husband, who didn’t quite get my need for nightly closure.  When my mother moved in our home with us, I could go to kiss her goodnight, which was the best way to end the day and begin my dreams.  I can’t wait for the holidays to do that with my girls.  Sometimes I just need to hold them for a few minutes taking them in with my senses, these girls who are part of me and of me.  It doesn’t quite seem fair that we bring children into this world and spend so much of ourselves raising them and then lose them at 18 when they go off to college.  In the grand scheme of things, 18 years of a life that can last into the 80s is just a small slice of time and we are so busy raising our children that we don’t realize that every day we move closer to losing them.  That is why sometimes we need to see them in person, smell their sweet hair fresh from the shower, hear their voices-excited, happy, sad, and hold them in our arms.

It is just a small moment in time, to send a message or dial a phone, but it is a gift that is worth more than any other, and the only request I have.

If an author can watch a character can evolve easily or struggle bring a character to life based simply on a name, then what are the implications for us?  I have put a lot of thought into names, not just my own name, but also the three names I selected for my daughters and the one male name I never had the opportunity to use.  I have pondered each name and its variations selecting it for rhythm and flow and for impractical things such as how the name sounds when spoken in a variety of circumstances ranging from singing it in a lullaby to calling a child in for dinner.  How would the name sound spoken by a teacher, a friend a lover?  A name is a critical part of one’s identity and some people don’t like their names, electing to change them.  I always liked my name, even though it is short and doesn’t offer much in the way of nicknames. I liked it because my mother used to sing “Once in Love With Amy” to me a lot when I was a little girl and because there was a song with my name in it, I figured it must be a pretty special name.

My mother went through several incarnations of her name, which was Marjorie only calling herself Marjorie when she was singing and being silly or giving her name in the legal sense, at the doctor’s perhaps.  For years she was “Marg” with no “e” at the end, a rebellion of sorts and then she finally began adding the “e” when people pronounced her name incorrectly.  To many of her friends, she was Margie, a spunkier, chummy version of her name.

I am driving my mother’s car now, with the license plate containing her initials, MK and I like that after a day at work, I walk to the car that is now mine, and smile, remembering my mother and in the morning the license greets me.  We are given our name as a gift when we are born and we become our name though we sometimes change the spelling and later add, change or hyphenate our name when we marry, but we are who we were named at the start for that is the name our mother whispers to us, sings to us, calls to us.  It is our bond with our mother.  Forever.