Names #3

I recently found one of the lists of baby names I’d written not long after finding out we were having a girl. And then I lost it again, so here’s part of a list from 2003 instead.

The name ’Calla’ was on the more recent one, and I still love it (thanks to the flowers), but wondering now if it suits Hazel better than ”Hazel” is too hard to tell; she’s Hazel. I can’t imagine her by any other name (though I’m sure she’d smell as sweet).

It took us two days to name Hazel after she was born. We’d been assured that we’d be able to look at our newborn and then at our shortlist and match the perfect name with our baby, but we had no such magical moment. After gazing at her for a long time, we looked at each other and said, “She doesn’t look like any name.” Alan sat down once more with the name book and a pen, and I decided I’d just wait until he gave up, frustrated, and then fight for Hazel. I realised that she didn’t look like a name yet because we hadn’t named her; as soon as her name was Hazel, she was a Hazel (and I noticed that I felt more bonded to her once she had a name).

I didn’t have the same uncertainty when naming Moses; I knew he was Moses before he was born, and he was named within minutes of arriving. Early in my second pregnancy I’d had that weird dream thing in which I saw myself holding a baby girl whose name was Hazel and who was mine, but even after that I still wasn’t sure the name was The One; Alan told me he wasn’t a huge fan of it (we’d been thinking of using his sister’s name, Zillah, as the middle name if we had a girl, and you can’t have a Hazel Zillah), and I wasn’t prepared to fight for it with so many months of pregnancy left to study names books and sites. We knew it would probably be our last chance to name something significant, so I wanted to take my time. Plus, there are some really cool names out there; in the last month or so of my pregnancy I discovered the name Seneca, which shares most of the things I love about Annika but didn’t break any of my rules. So Seneca battled Hazel for a while in my mind, but eventually lost. 

After spending so long deciding on Hazel’s first name, choosing her middle name was over within seconds:

Alan: I think it needs to be a three-syllable name.

Me [testing his theory]: Hazel Evelyn…

Alan: I like that! Do you like that?

Me: I do like that!

Done.

(Evelyn was the girl’s name I liked when pregnant with Moses, but it had become too popular to consider this time around. So I had done some thinking about it before attaching it to my child for the rest of her life. Just so you know.)

It’s interesting that neither of the names (or middle names) I chose for my children appear on any of the names lists I’d compiled before I was ever pregnant. It’s interesting that if Moses and Hazel were born a couple of years earlier or later than they were, they might have different names. I wonder how much our names shape our identities, and whether Moses would be someone different if he’d been Xavier or Evan, or (if I’d watched Parenthood before he arrived) Dax or Crosby instead. Would it change the way we came to know Hazel if we’d chosen Soraya or Villette or Lyric or Pippin (Pip for short. Alan especially liked this one)? I’ve no idea. I’ve met people who I don’t naturally link with their names (a David who really should be a Richard, for example), and I always remember the name I think they should have rather than the one they actually have. Maybe people will feel the same way about Moses or Hazel one day.

Alan was far more involved in the name-suggesting-and-choosing process this time around, perhaps because I didn’t seem certain so he felt like he had a chance. Last time, he thought Moses was a crazy name; this time he suggested Zephyr. I like the name Zephyr (apart from the spelling), but after high fiving him for thinking outside the box, I had to explain that Zephyr was perhaps a bit further away from the box than I’d been thinking; I wanted to still be able to see the box, maybe even to reach out and touch the box. I just didn’t want to be in the box.

Oh, and I discovered a simple and efficient test for deciding whether or not a name could make it onto our shortlist: the “Prime Minister or Rock Star?” test. If we liked the sound of a name I’d imagine it on a rock star and then on a prime minister, and if it didn’t fit comfortably for either role, it was thrown away. There aren’t many names that can’t be rockified if necessary (I’m thinking of you, Patience from The Grates), but could Zephyr ever be a prime minister? NO. NO SHE COULDN’T.

Hazel, on the other hand, could be a prime minister. Or a rock star. Whichever one she chooses.

Not an Anglican

from here

Apparently the debate over women’s roles in the church is raging again in Sydney Anglican Land. I have a Facebook friend who’s fascinated by it; if it wasn’t for his posts I’d have had no idea. It’s a nice sign that things have changed for me. I used to feel like these people were my immediate family, and I had to do what I could to help my brothers and sisters see and understand the egalitarian perspective. Now, they’re still my family, but they’re more like distant cousins, and it feels almost strange to eavesdrop on my Great Uncle John (Dickson) and Great Uncle Matthias (Media) arguing about where on the complementarian spectrum they think the Bible places everyone. If there was less “BUT THIS IS WHAT THE PASSAGE CLEARLY SAYS” and more talk about how we go about interpreting the Bible, I might have felt hopeful and been tempted to stick around and listen more; alas, it seems no one’s noticed their arguments are over the wrong thing, and so this debate will continue for many years to come, most probably. Unfortunately for them. 

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It took us one week/around six weeks to find our new church. We went there on the first weekend we decided to start looking and I loved it, but it seemed imprudent (or something) to decide to choose a church without comparing it to all the others in the area. So we went to all the others in the area and grew increasingly despair-y over the chances of ever finding the perfect one, and then one Sunday I threw my hands up and said, “I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE.” I was tired of smiling at strangers and hoping both that they’d talk to me and that they wouldn’t talk to me, and feeling terrified that the minister would say something that would make me cry during the service, and trying to convince Moses that church was a good use of some of our limited weekend time with Daddy around. So I decided to give up. Then later that afternoon I remembered that we’d already found the right church ages ago, and wondered if maybe we should just go back there. So we did, and we stayed.

I love it I love it I love it. I love that they hand out instruments to “the young and the young at heart” and though the music is often drowned out by the sound of out-of-time percussion I’m moved by the lyrics and Mo’s exuberant tambourining. I love that we sing and pray to God as “Father and Mother, Creator and Poet.” I love that they’re a community who obviously loves those inside and out of the church, and those inside and out of the Church; a community who understands that

Too often social action in evangelical churches is barely concealed evangelism, or at best the sugar that sweetens the evangelistic pill. It is the decoy to attract sinners onto our patch so that we might ‘bag’ them and convert them. Such a policy lacks integrity and those ‘sinners’ who get close enough to smell it get put off by the stench of hypocrisy that surrounds it. Pastoral care in the community should not be seen as a useful supplement to the real task, that of saving souls, but as an essential response to the call of Christ to care for ‘the least of these’ his brethren, amongst whom are included all who religion would want to exclude. Paul Goodliff in Care in a Confused Climate: Pastoral Care and Postmodern Culture (Pages 132-133)

It’s the church I’ve been dreaming of. Instead of bouncing from foot to foot with gloves raised, ready to defend itself if struck, my heart has learned that it won’t be attacked at church now and simply rests. It seems crazy to me that for so long this on-guard, slightly-stressed feeling has been a normal part of my church life; feeling completely at peace while there is strange and new and wonderful. And, yes, I know it probably won’t last; no church is perfect, and as we get to know people better and see how things are run I’m sure there’ll be things that drive me bonkers. But I’ll continue to relish this time and give thanks for it while I can, especially since these may be the final days of our whole family going to church together.

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I filled out a form the other day and felt slightly naughty moving past the “Anglican” option when looking for an answer to the ‘Which denomination are you part of?’ question. Being part of the Anglican church has formed a fairly big chunk of my identity for years now, and I’m still figuring out who I am now that I’m not a member of that branch of the family, now that I feel more like a distant cousin. So for now I’m just “Not an Anglican.” That’s my denomination at the moment.

Time

from here

There are three certainties in my life: death, taxes, and being perpetually shocked at the day and/or date. I spend my entire year crying out to anyone who’ll listen, “It’s THURSDAY! I thought it was Wednesday, but it’s a WHOLE DAY LATER!” or “It’s nearly June! JUNE! Can you believe it?! We’re nearly halfway through this year!!!!!!!!” I can’t help it.

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Do you ever put food in the microwave and then do something else and realise with surprise how little time that something else takes because you finish it and then notice that the microwave’s still microwaving? It’s always a nice reality check, because I tend to put things off because I think they’ll take forever, but these microwave moments make me see, “Look! I just brought in that washing and my leftover chow mein is still heating up!” It takes less than two minutes to bring in a half-load of washing from the verandah, apparently. I didn’t know that before.

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When I hear concepts that sound difficult I sort them into two mental boxes: “Things that I could probably understand if I really tried”, and “Things that I will never understand no matter how hard I try”. Radio waves and television signals and digital channels fall into the latter box. Also in that box is the time difference between here and Perth. There are announcements on Triple J saying that Western Australians should call now for a show that won’t come on for another few hours, and I used to think hard about how that was possible, but now I just tell my boggling mind to let it go. It’s in the “Never” box; I shouldn’t waste my time.

Quotes

“Once women used to mother collectively. They gathered their food together, they talked as they worked and shared their inner worlds. Even as the human race began to live in villages their children of all ages washed through the community. Their needs were tended by whichever adult was closest to hand. If a biological mother was unwell, tired, busy, disinterested or disinclined to attend to her child’s demands the child simply moved on to the next mother figure in the community. When a child was ill or smitten by accident the pain felt by the parents was the pain of all and the work of caring for the child was shared. If the baby or child died a whole community experienced the loss and mourned together with the parents.

Today we expect our mothers to take their children into the four walls of their homes within a week of giving birth, there to undertake every single responsibility of raising that baby alone. A mother is expected to be nurturer, gatherer of food, cook, nutritional expert, educator, psychological expert, emotional support person, cleaner washer woman, expert problem solver, medical diagnostician and practitioner, eternal giver of unconditional love… Most women arrive on the threshold of motherhood with not a single day’s training in any of these skills and without a word of warning that she may find them difficult, tedious, boring or soul-destroying. And she is considered ‘lucky’ if her partner, family or friends help her. She is expected to perform these duties in isolation with little or no support from the community. Indeed, she will often feel as though she has been actively shut out of the community whether she resides in the remotest corners of the country or in the middle of the largest city.

However, if she feels depleted by the endless giving, if she weeps for the trapped and lonely and exhausted person she has become, she will be labelled ‘disordered’. It is she who will be judged to be in need of ‘treatment’ to help her ‘adjust’.

In terms of evolution this raising of our children in isolation from the flow of community has come upon us in the blink of an eye. Only since the Industrial Revolution have we begun to  withdraw into our separate houses and to exclude our wider communities from collective parenting. In the space of 200 years we have devolved from communal life to the nuclear family to single parenthood. Genetically we could not have even begun to mutate to the degree necessary such that we could possibly find this style of mothering ‘natural’ or acceptable. Thus, women are being asked to raise their children in a manner diametrically opposed to their genetic programming. Is it any wonder 88% of us find it difficult to adjust!” (Pages 164-165)

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“Once I accepted that I had stepped through the one-way door into motherland, I looked around and saw that I had entered a world where women of all kinds were routinely handling exhaustion, loneliness, confusion, guilt, enormous responsibility, great love, huge fear. They were largely lacking any meaningful support and generally were doing battle with low self-esteem and a yawning need for acknowledgement. Nobody was talking about not coping, not really. Whilst we will readily admit that mothering is difficult, few of us let on that we suspect we may not be cut out for this lifestyle; that maybe it was all a mistake. Few of us feel alright about asking for and accepting help. Our mothers did this. Other mothers are doing it all over the world. And so we feel that we should be able to do it, too.” (Page 286)

From Naked Motherhood: Shattering Illusions and Sharing Truths by Wendy LeBlanc.