My father had a name that he was born with. But forget that
name. He was one of sixteen children, and somewhere along the way his baptismal name and his birth date got lost. I want to talk to you about his
other name, his middle name. The one that he went by.
My father's middle name is the name of a road or something,
in the town where he lived, in a country that isn't this one. And it is a name
that his family pronounced in an accent that isn't common in the States but
isn't at all impossible to attempt.
Anyway my father moved to the States and eventually married
a New Yorker. His New York
wife had an accent but thought she didn't, and his wife, my mother, thought my
father’s accent was funny, so she Americanized his name.
My father went along with the name change, no contest, but I used to wonder if he never really wanted his name to change—because sometimes when distant-living family members would come to visit and would call his name in that old familiar accent, I would see a look come over his face, an indescribably warm look, like a little boy whose mother just told him that he was a good boy and she'd just baked some cookies just for him, warm out of the oven.
My father went along with the name change, no contest, but I used to wonder if he never really wanted his name to change—because sometimes when distant-living family members would come to visit and would call his name in that old familiar accent, I would see a look come over his face, an indescribably warm look, like a little boy whose mother just told him that he was a good boy and she'd just baked some cookies just for him, warm out of the oven.
My father is also, I believe, a man fond of nicknames, but
my mom named all of her children names that were difficult to shorten and particularly
fought over having any of our names shortened to monikers ending in a
"y" sound. (It is interesting to note here that my father's name is a
name that ends in a "y" sound.)
Still I was pretty sure that my father wanted to, at least
occasionally, call me by a nickname for my first name, a warm, sweet, little
name that my mom didn't want to hear. And some mornings when the morning was
still night and the house was creaking cold and I had to wake early to study
for an exam, my father would come into my bedroom, rub my feet gently, and say,
"Good morning, Laurie Dorie. Good
morning, Morning Glory," And those were good mornings.
Anyway, I had no idea what a Morning Glory was, but this
summer I bought a two dollar and fifty cent packet of seeds labeled with the
name, and I planted those seeds around my mailbox and around one tree out
front. Having no experience planting anything, I was really surprised when they
actually took.
Anyway, I'm writing this to tell you now that the results of
that planting sometimes make me feel a little close to tears when I see them.
Perhaps a little something like a girl whose father said she was a good girl
and he baked some cookies just for her, warm out of the oven.
Or maybe, it is more like a little girl who feels that a bunch of lovely blue flowers amplifying her name in the bittersweet, horn-trumpeted, tinny, crackling, skipping sound of phonographs grew right over her heart.
Or maybe, it is more like a little girl who feels that a bunch of lovely blue flowers amplifying her name in the bittersweet, horn-trumpeted, tinny, crackling, skipping sound of phonographs grew right over her heart.
