Names, Friends, Guests

It was not such a great drama naming my babies. Despite all the agita beforehand -- the baby names books, the family trees, in the end they just named themselves: it seemed obvious in the moment.

I have been thinking about the names of the people I love. Many have names that though common, regular names (Andrea, or Jessica, for instance) mean for me only that one person, nothing else. Forever and ever, should I meet someone with that name, it will only, always be hers.

But Annie? This is a name that has chased me through my life (Amy is another) and forced me to redefine my definitions of the name, my connection to the name, over and over. The elementary school Annie, the highschool Annie, the Annie(s) of my suburbia.

The first Annie loved playing imagination games and we were good at it. The second Annie became a friend of my heart, a confidant of my secrets, a co-conspirator in grown-up games of make believe, a reminder to me to just be me. One of the latest Annies, in a collection of great ones, assures me that life still has secrets and gifts in strange places.

We met in a likely situation for girls like us -- a PTO meeting -- but our friendship leapt out of that almost immediately, through notes passed via email, even before we ever met face to face. Maybe it was the comfort of her name -- just to say it brings me back to sweet times -- and truth be told, to know this new Annie makes me feel mildly metaphysical: maybe there is something bigger than us all afterall.

She is a writer. She wrote this:


"I called a friend today who has more younglings than me. She has a son between my two youngest, a nice relationship b/c they all play well. She has three more boys...one is six, one is three and one isn't one.

I called her because she wants to lose the "baby-fat" and is always ready for a chat and a walk. I am always ready for the time I know that slipped by me all too fast: the appreciation for tying a shoe, the wet kisses that babies give, the joy that an under-dog on the swing can deliver to a dare-devil.

The morning was beautiful and seamless. The air was good, the sky that perfect color of blue that never looks real in a painting. I pushed a double stroller for the first time in two years: my kids loved the carriage and only physically grew out of it. Some Mom's survive their kids’ childhood, and some of us are re-born by it. Everyone I passed commented on how beautiful my babies were... and all I could summon was "thank you" as my girlfriend smiled kindly and knowingly.

Life is a flurry, and in the thick of raising babies the notes are sometimes lost. I heard them today.

Childhood is really measured in notes after all: the sounds and pitch of nursery rhymes, the little voices with so much to say, the notes to Santa, "the teacher", the tooth fairy. I helped with one tonight:

"Dear toothe fairee...I lost my toothe. Pleasse do not forget about me, love, R".

My youngest just turned seven and I know that his innocence is in jeopardy. I know that too soon the magic will be replaced with reality, that discussions of what comes for Christmas will be replaced with "what I WANT". I know that as uncomfortable as I am about the kids aging, it's about me aging too. I'm not ready to be "that" Mom.

My ten-year-old son asked me to find him some shorts today. I told him to wear yesterday's if they were clean. He said, "Mom, that makes me feel poor". I won't divulge the potty humor I used to gauge if they were clean, but "put them on anyway", I said, and my younger sons fell off the bed in gales of laughter and the ten year old stomped off. I summoned him back to my bed, my nest, my favorite place, and asked him if I was embarrassing. He said, "No, you are mortifying."

I try in these moments to summon the strength I had when I was changing three kids in diapers at the same time, breastfeeding an infant at all hours of the night, care taking a parent who's been robbed of her mind, and renovating a house all at once. It’s like when wounds heal and leave a scar -- a time... a place; when I became strongest at my weakest.

I try, I try to summon the strength for this. It is a different strength than I had before, and it is harder to find. I know it is in me because I am a Mom and it has to be. God wouldn't have left out the most important part."