“On naming our second daughter”

I’ve been writing this essay in my head for some days now. It’s about naming our second daughter, who at present is seven weeks old. In sitting down to write it I was considering two titles for the essay, both lines from Shakespeare: either “Who is Sylvia?” or “What’s in a name?”

And how fitting to this essay that I am torn between these two lines! Each is beautiful and classic and perfect for the topic at hand, it almost seems a shame to choose one at the expense of the other. Moreover, each posing the exact questions I’ve been asking myself for weeks.

You see, just like I’ve been torn in naming this essay about naming our second daughter, I’ve been torn in naming our second daughter. I know some parents have “the name” settled months in advance either by family tradition, shared regard, or begrudging truce. Other parents wait to meet their new child before bestowing a name.

James and I fall into this latter category. Though I spent months of my pregnancies amassing scraps of paper filled with names and different combinations, both of our daughters went unnamed until after birth. We wanted to meet each child and see which name suited her. This technique worked well with Aurelia—I love saying her full name over and over, Aurelia Diana Astrid, and my heart just warms. I’ve had no second thoughts about the other names we considered for her.

But I’ve struggled the second time. We wanted our second daughter to have her own beautiful, strong, and meaningful name, but for whatever reason that name hasn’t come as easily as Aurelia’s. Not for a lack of contenders: if anything I fell in love with two names equally and have been torn for seven weeks to determine who she is.

The question of a name is an important one to me. Juliet might ask “What’s in a name?” but as my grandmother told me, “A well-loved child has many names.” And she sure came up with some zany ones! Though she gave my mother only one legal name, Phyllis, she frequently called both my mother and me a cast of other character names, from Zelda to Sadie Marie.

I especially delighted in taking on these, and other, names. As many of you know I’ve donned versions of my given names, Margaret and Katharine, throughout my life: Maggie Kate, Kate, Kat, Mags, MK. In Kindergarten I convinced all I met to call me Pippi after my idol, Ms. Longstocking.

Maybe, after all, Juliet was right; for all these names I was the same person. Yet, unlike Ms. Capulet, names did not define or burden me, but they seemed to open me up to new worlds and aspects of myself.

For all my experience with the comings and goings of names and nicknames, finding the “right” name for my daughters has felt like one of the most important decisions of my life. There’s sacredness to it. The right to name is given by God to Adam, and it’s humanity’s first act, thereby making it one of the defining acts of the human experience. (Can you tell I was an English major? Everything has meaning!!) And since Adam got to most of the world before I could, I won’t have many opportunities in my life to name somebody. And so it is with reverence I approach the naming process.

Why, then, have I spent the last seven weeks feeling like I got it wrong?

Actually, it’s more complicated than that. I feel like I actually got it right twice.

You see this little girl’s name is Sylvie, but to me it’s also Vivienne. Vivienne is the name I called her when I was pregnant with her. It means “life,” and this spring child has been so full of life, from her speedy conception to her speedier birth!

So why didn’t we name her that? In part because she’s also Sylvia, a name that kind of took us by surprise. Toward the end of the pregnancy James suggested Sylvia, one of the very few names he nominated (he mostly played a veto role in the naming process for both kiddos), and that made it special. It means “of the forest” and carries that beautiful connection to Shakespeare’s poem, all of which made it feel suitable for a spring baby born at the edge of the forest.

During our whole stay at the hospital we were torn which to name her, and increasingly felt pressured by the hospital staff to submit the paperwork. This sacred and intimate process of naming suddenly felt bureaucratic and out of our hands.

Why didn’t we give her both names? I don’t know. At the time we saw them as distinct names but we felt rushed, pressured, (tired!!!), and were overthinking it all.

And so she came home with a beautiful name: Sylvia Blythe Calliope, names of nature and poetry.

But almost immediately I regretted giving up Vivienne. I found myself calling her Vivi and Vivikins, but then feeling like I shouldn’t. I got used to calling her Sylvia, but couldn’t shake a feeling of incomplete connection to it. It started to affect how I felt about the baby, like I couldn’t fully bond with her because I couldn’t call her what I wanted to call her. I spoke to many of my most trusted friends and family. The consensus was that Sylvia is a beautiful name and suited her. I didn’t disagree, I just couldn’t forget Vivienne. So I took to calling her Vie, initially intended only as a written handle short for Sylvie, but it became a sly way for me to call her ViVIEnne.

It was hardly a day out of the hospital before I told James I felt like we’d named her the wrong thing. He cautioned I should wait a while and think it over, or consider using Vivienne as a private name. I felt miserable and unresolved. Over and over I’d recite “Who is Sylvia” to remind myself how “holy, fair, and wise is she,” but often left me pondering late into the night “who IS my Sylvia?” and will I ever feel resolved to call her that?

Many tears have been shed over this. I’ve felt that at stake is my understanding of her, my instinct as a mother, and joy at uttering the name of my beloved child.

And so, on Monday I shed my last tears. I approached James with dry eyes, resolution, and satisfaction at finding a solution at last. I asked him if we could change her name legally to incorporate my beloved Vivienne, and, out of his gracious love for me, my process, and her, he agreed. Yesterday we sent off the paperwork (what a pain in the ass, by the way—oy!) and we would like to re-introduce our daughter as: SYLVIA VIVIENNE BLYTHE MYALL. (Calliope will remain a beloved honorary, but not legal, name.)

I don’t know what she will go by throughout her life. Maybe like me she’ll take on many names. Maybe the silent constant in all this—Blythe—will be her chosen favorite. Maybe she’ll feel more comfortable living life as a man and will be Sylvio or Vivian (which is also a man’s name, so that’s handy). I don’t know. Right now we call her both, depending on what comes out, or Vie if I don’t want to decide, or Miss Frog if I feel silly. I’m not certain what you should call her. Call her what you want. Or be like my grandmother and call her Zelda or Sadie Marie.

I want to nominate Patty Connelly who teaches Spanish and ESL (English as a Second Language) at MTA High School in Topsham.

Two years ago, my family took into our home a family of asylum seekers from Burundi (East Africa) who had three teenagers; we were offering them both a place to stay and help adjusting to life in the US. The first thing I had to do was register the teenagers for school. I have three kids myself, but at that time they were 4, 3, and 4 months and just in day care, so my first ever experience with my local school district was registering the teenagers for high school. I barely knew what to do with the massive stack of paperwork the district required and was doubting if I could actually deliver on the help I wanted to give.

That’s when Ms. Connelly stepped in. With her broad smile, decades of experience, and dedication that extends are beyond the classroom, I found in Ms. Connelly an ally, mentor, and educator who has made possible the academic, cultural, and personal success of my teenagers, as well as helping their guardians and our family more than I thought was possible from any teacher.

From day 1, Ms. Connelly embraced these teenagers—Naynay, Charlie, and Josh—rising to the challenge of teaching them English, boosting their confidence, helping their assimilation, and encouraging their personal goals. She has taken them sledding and ice skating (quite an experience for three kids from East Africa!), designed a social studies class about Maine that she led during summer vacation, sent them on field trips (Naynay got to visit NYC with the school chorus), taken them on college visits, and helped them with their sports and extracurricular interests (Josh plays lacrosse and football, Charlie plays soccer, and Naynay was in the school’s fashion club).

She has helped them (and their guardians) get jobs and is a vital member of our family carpool getting them to various work shifts and practices, even helping get them to school when they’ve missed a bus. Her beat up minivan—stuffed to the brim with the gear for her own kids’ activities (her oldest, Calla, is in the same grade as my teenagers and is a dedicated ice skater and saxophonist, and her youngest, Jake, is a 1st grader who plays soccer and often plays with my own little kids)—is constantly pulling in and out of our driveway.

Last November, one of the teenagers, Charlie, was in Portland and collapsed. When he came to the US his doctor discovered a heart problems, a hole in his heart, that could be patched by a device in a fairly routine surgery; however that device had become dislodged, re-opening the existing hole, enlarging it, and creating other holes. Charlie could have died but was saved through emergency open heart surgery at Maine Med. Four days later he underwent a second emergent heart surgery. He was only 17 at the time.

Ms. Connelly spent as much time at the hospital as any member of his family or my family. She brought magazines, hot chocolates, love and warmth. She drove daily between Topsham and Portland, sometimes making multiple trips. I tried to be a brave face for Charlie and the rest of the family, but hers was the shoulder I could cry on when I feared he might not make it. She set up a GoFundMe that rallied community support for Charlie (which exceeded its goal in just a couple of days), and helped me coordinate and implement his post-op care, including driving him to medical appointments, smoothing his transition back to school, and helping him process the very real fear of relapse. Remember during all of this she still was responsible for her other Spanish and ESL classes, plus her own kids.

Charlie’s heart is better now—he was cleared to return to school and even play soccer—and what’s more he survived the period of depression and uncertainty post-op in large part because of the network of support, consistency, encouragement, and positivity spearheaded by Ms. Connelly .

Charlie, Naynay, and Josh are now seniors. They consistently earn A grades. Their grasp of English—so basic two years ago— is now very high. They are respected members of the MTA community (Charlie has even donned the mascot costume!) and looking ahead to college. Their futures are brighter thanks to the academic and personal support of Ms. Connelly .

What’s more, Ms. Connelly has helped me enormously. My husband and I work full-time, are raising three young children, and are constantly maintaining our leaky old farm house which is bursting with 10 of us living in it. But our Burundian teenagers have become as special to us as our own children, and the bonds between our children and the teenagers are beautiful. We spent homecoming weekend as a family cheering on Josh’s football game (they won!), Charlies’s soccer game (they won, too!), and getting everyone dressed for the dance (Naynay was surely the most beautiful one there!). I am leading the life of love, service, and community that I want my children to learn, but it is not without help. Ms. Connelly has become a role model to me of generosity, flexibility, kindness, and consistency. She has made my commitment possible, and I am eternally grateful.

When I saw your competition to nominate a teacher for a free car I simply had to nominate Ms. Connelly. She has put on so many miles (not to mention hours) driving our teenagers around all out of the goodness of her heart and a sense of mission to support these kids that stretches far beyond the normal school hours. I think she’d look awesome in a shiny new ride from Goodwin Chevrolet!

(Epilogue: a few months after I submitted this we learned that Ms. Connelly—whose name I changed for privacy—won the free car!)

This week I was teaching descriptive words to my class of Mexican middle schoolers. Physical traits, identity words (thanks genderbread person), and words to describe personality traits. The week was fun, filled with endless games of “Guess Who?” and lots of drawing.

As I was preparing the next day’s lesson plan one evening, I received the worst of messages: a former student of mine had died in a tragic accident. My heart seemed to deflate and swell at the same time as if a major current I’d counted on for a lifetime of steady movement suddenly reversed course.

I had thought the world of this young man. He was a grounded adventurer. I had worked with him steadily for months and always treasured our conversations.

Once, last spring—was it really just a few months ago?—he emailed me to express what a profound reaction he’d had listening to my high school-aged host son giving a presentation. I knew his brother was in my host son’s class but I was delighted that a) he remembered I had a host son in that high school, b) that he’d had such a profound reaction to my son’s story, c) he’d taken the time to email me about it, and d) he, a cool college kid, had not only to watch his younger brother’s school presentation but that he’d stayed on Zoom to watch other high schoolers present. What a guy.

The night I learned he had died I searched desperately for that precious email from him to reread it, as if that would allow me to be once again in his steady, bright, appreciative, and kind company. But having changed email addresses a few months back I realized I’d inadvertently forfeited that memory, one I’d never anticipated needing to draw on in the light of tragedy.

At the end of the week on descriptive words, I presented the obituary of my lost student to my class in hopes of showing how you can see someone through words. I asked each middle schooler—most of them 12 or 13—to read aloud a sentence or two. As they read the many special words that described this life well-lived lost too soon, I found myself weeping. Two then four then twenty-four eyes found my face, tears falling and immediately absorbing into my mask. But I stood there, letting them see my tears.

I want young people to see the humanity of the adults in their lives, to see the impact students can have on their teachers, to see what an impact a short life can have, and to see that you don’t have to run away from your grief.

I closed my eyes for a moment, detaining a few tears and feeling the sublime sadness at the loss of my bright friend, sounded out through the shaky voices of these middle schoolers; then I felt arms around my waist. And more, and more, til the whole class had made a nest of arms and love around me and each other. This would have been him in middle school, as it was him when I knew him in college, and as I have absolute certainty he would have been for the rest of his life if human bodies, even the young strong vivacious ones, weren’t ultimately so delicate.

“After two years of zigzagging policy and roller coaster emotions, terrible loss and tantalizing false dawns, closing borders and intermittently shuttered schools, people’s resilience has dwindled. … Once linear, life now seems circular. Schools open. They close again. Travel becomes easier, only for new obstacles to arise. Sickness from Covid-19 subsides, to be replaced by long Covid and now indications that even those who have recovered from the virus might get reinfected with Omicron.”

Too much in this piece rings true to me personally. I used to think that I would face “unprecedented times” with a Churchillian gusto, an opportunity to withdraw from the savings account of resiliency, to demonstrate to future generations what rising to the occasion entails.

I remember as Bowdoin shut down in March 2020—a decision that, after weeks of COVID wrecking chaos in the world of study abroad, did not surprise me— I instructed a student I viewed as resilient to resist the vortex of doom and disappointment. Instead I encouraged her to lead her peers to acceptance and adaptation. It was no less than I asked of myself.

But as these “unprecedented times” have continued, with moments of un-unrelenting, false hope, and dawns that turned back to dusk with unnatural speed, I need to acknowledge to myself the toll this has taken on me. I started to lose that valorous attitude sometime in 2020 (July maybe?) and since then I’ve become profoundly depressed.

Yes of course I have moments of levity and joy, afforded in great part by the luxuries of the privileges I can leverage—a pause in my career, an international move that gives my kids an exceptional in-person learning environment, and the camaraderie of our family’s pursuit of a new language.

However, I worry it seems to the outside world that our adventure is wholly life-affirming, when in fact it owes just as much if not more to the listlessness of depression, unending grief, and a quest for distraction from the pains of this pandemic that I feared would drown me if we were to stay subject to the chaos permeating life in the US, especially the lives of parents.

In the weeks before I left my beloved job and home I’d begun crying unstoppably every day, a rainy season that wouldn’t relent. Mitigating the stressors of work, uncertain schooling, and the endless upkeep of an old house, has diverted the tears like a capacious set of gutters free of leaves and debris, and for those I am grateful.

But gutters or no, the rains continue for me and, let’s be honest, with most of us. These “unprecedented times” are not unprecedented, though the precedent is not some noble and glorious war; we’ve returned to a state of plague that could envelop generations.

I’m mad global leaders let this happen. I’m so mad at how my kids’ childhoods have been compromised. And I’m furious that the things I thought I could rely on most about myself—my default state of happiness and capability—have been so diminished.

By all means, join me in appreciating the beauty in the images I capture of our new life. Know that my appreciation is authentic and deeply grateful. But know also that it’s not so easy to snap a pic of desperate yearning for certainty, or the swelling of trepidation at another Greek letter, or the unbidden desire to pour all of the apologies and regrets of this poorly managed world into the receiving pupils of your children. But I suppose that’s what writing is for.

Thank you for reading, friends.

What does one person do when they’re stuck in a corporation’s process that’s designed to disenfranchise the individual’s success?

I’m trying to do a little thing: get a $120 monthly fee removed from my mortgage since I’ve paid off a certain percentage of my principal early. But it’s January, and I’ve been working on this since last August. Based on my last call, I’m thinking it won’t be resolved this year. I’m bright, pretty savvy financially and patient, yet persistent. So how come I can’t make any headway?

I think plenty of Americans are in this position: We’re hardworking, proactive, and responsible. And yet all too often we are subjected to labyrinthine processes with insurance companies, banks, and government agencies.

These organizations hold all the cards. They subject us to murky processes, beleaguered with jargon and passivity. Never-ending phone trees and hold music; dropped calls; unintelligible call center workers – sound familiar?

What makes matters worse is I didn’t choose this mortgage company. I chose a well-respected local bank, Northeast, to provide my mortgage; but within days my mortgage, like most, was sold to another entity – in my case, Nationstar Mortgage. So even if I paid to refinance, it could get resold back to Nationstar. There’s no escape!

But you know what? I’m not giving up. They’re not beating me. I’m going to keep calling. Each dropped call, I’m calling back. I’m going to be the squeakiest wheel since the Rebel Alliance took on the Death Star. And I hope whatever process you’re stuck in, you stay in it.

Sure, we may collectively be wasting millions of hours on hold, hours that could be contributing to the nation’s gross domestic product, but if that’s the game to play, then fine. We’ll play it. And plenty of us will win.

A poem for Sarah, written on watercolor paper, compromised by children’s artwork, and drafted with the assistance of half a glass of wine and her photography.

….

“I wanted,” she said as she reached.

But wanting was interrupted along

Far-reaching horizontal axes.

Then she looked.

No barrier crossed her above

And she saw

Another who reached

Skyward.

Walls and wires wind and bind indiscriminately.

Life is not boundless, we are all rooted

Even as we reach.

Some can grow up the wall

But can do little without its support.

Others reach up

Spread over

And extend over a widening patch of existence.

What is nine? Nine is confidence and determination, voracious reading, and burgeoning writing. Nine is persistent questioning and opinion testing. Nine is resistant and creative. and devoted to animals and belligerent with her sister. Nine is wacky faces and lots of chocolate cake. Happy birthday to my golden star child, Aurelia Diana Astrid