A Son By Any Other Name…
Choosing names for our children was– like so much of our marriage–a struggle. Looking back, some of the memories make me laugh. When I became pregnant for the first time, my husband and I were wanna-be hippies planning a home birth. We toyed with names like “River” for a boy, and “Honesty” or “Cadence” for a girl. My mother went apoplectic when she heard “River” and told us we should name the baby “Oliver” if it was a boy and “Olga” if it was a girl. Since our last name started with O, the child’s initials would have been “OO” which she thought was hysterical. Anson and I agreed to never discuss the topic with her again.
But that was about all we could agree on. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I had a rush of insterest in family history. I loved the name Margaret which was my grandmother’s name. She represented the Irish-Catholic side of my heritage and her intense love of family was one of the traits I admired about her. I suggested naming the child Margaret and calling her Maggie. Anson didn’t like that idea, saying “If we’re going to call her Maggie, let’s just name her Maggie.” But I wanted to honor my grandmother who went by Margaret all her life. So I stupidly put away the name “Maggie.” I also had a beloved great-aunt, Kitty, who had spunk and energy and humor– her full name was Katharine, and I had always loved the name Katie for a girl. Again, “If w’ere going to call her Katie, let’s just name her Katie.” We ended up naming her Kate Elizabeth, and even so, we called her Katie. (Isn’t that the same as naming her Katherine and calling her Katie?) I wish now that I had pushed harder for my choices– but I was young, insecure, and didn’t want to fight about it.
With my second pregnancy, I looked through my family tree and scrapbooks my older relatives sent me. One of the richest stories about my own family came from a couple– Daniel and Katherine Heffernan– who moved to Indiana from Ireland in the 1800’s. I loved the name Daniel– it reminded me of the gentle Daniel Tiger on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and the song by Elton John. My grandmother Margaret had a brother named Daniel and the name Danny to me sounded confident and dashing. Anson rejected Danny because he had been bullied by a boy named Danny as a kid. Again, I didn’t want to fight, and I let Danny go.
I think it’s important to mention that I was surrounded by his family. We actually lived next door to his parents, and his sister and her family were 15 minutes away. My family was spread out all over the country– New Mexico, Florida, Georgia and Indiana. We were dirt poor, and travel is expensive. When I asked to spend more time with my family, my husband said he didn’t enjoy being around my family. His mother literally said to me once “Yes, but….our family is better.” So I guess I didn’t feel like I could win in these discussions. There was so much psychic support behind him and his preferences, and so little behind mine, I felt. So I turned to his family history.
In my husband’s family tree, I noticed that there had been someone named Anson Jonathan in every century. It started with a Nathan, who named his son Jonathan, who named his son Anson Jonathan in the 1700’s. There was an Anson Jonathan in every century after, although Anson, my husband, did not have the middle name Jonathan. I was in the midst of my American Studies degree and I had just learned that, in the 1700’s, John was the stereotypical name used for a British citizen (as in John Q. Public) and Jonathan was the stereotypical American name. So Jonathan, for me, represented American culture, and it reminded me of apples and apple trees, which are connected to my father in my mind. So we agreed on Anson Jonathan. Neither of us wanted to use “big Anson” and “little Anson,” or “Anson, senior” and “Anson, junior.” We toyed with Andy and A.J., but we finally settled on calling him Jonathan, which I came to love.
Still, my son’s legal name is Anson Jonathan, and when he transferred schools in the seventh grade, his teachers called him Anson. He never corrected them, whether out of shyness or preference I’m not sure. But here and there, people started calling him Anson to my surprise. When he and his dad started working together at a ski area, my then fourteen year-old son had a badge that said “Jonathan.” The next year, he asked for “Jon” on his badge. And the next year, it was “Janson.” Then his dad, Anson, died.
Jonathan started community college and introduced himself as Anson from the start. He told his cousins and other relatives to start calling him Anson. I remember when he officially “came out” to them as Anson and the discussion we had later, just the two of us. I explained to him the family history I had wanted to preserve and the way his dad had rejected my ideas for baby names. I told him about how hard it would be for me to call him by his dad’s name– for many reasons. His dad was an alcoholic, our marriage was difficult from day one. We had been separated when he died and his behavior had been erratic and hurtful. He died in a car accident– suddenly, tragically, unnecessarily. I know my son loved his dad and misses him terribly. But I just can’t bring myself to call him by that name.
I don’t know what to do with all this. I still call my son Jonathan, or J. He says he’s fine with it. His cousins and aunts and uncles on his dad’s side call him Anson. I’m sure it brings them comfort and pride. My siblings and their children, who he rarely sees, call him Jonathan. This morning, my brother saw a post on Facebook and aksed me why my son was using the name Anson. And here it is all back again–what struggles are worth arguing over? What can we bend on? Now it is his name, his identity. I absolutely respect that. But what if I just can’t call him by that name?
Silver
I sat down today to look at my silver. I have two sets now– my mother’s tarnished silver, which I inherited last year when she died, and my mother-in-law’s set, which she gave me after her daughter and son said they didn’t want it. My in-laws are moving from their home of more than 30 years, passing on and throwing away bits and pieces of their past.
My mother’s set is incomplete and very plain– “Hannah Hull” is the style, and like my mother was, it is very practical and unadorned. It came in a beautiful dark, wooden box with my mother’s initials– JNH–in felt on the inside of the lid. My mother-in-law’s set is more delicate and has fine ornamentation– nothing ostentatious– and I feel it is more like me. The box it comes in is cleanly organized, but the bottom is falling out, and my plan was to switch the two sets so that my mother-in-law’s set is in my mother’s box.
The flimsy box has a pamphlet in it from the early 50’s when my mother-in-law got married. “The Care of Your Silver” from the International Silver Company of Meriden, Connecticut. It is basically an advertisement for International Silver Polish. There is also a small card from some relatives– “A Wedding Gift” with a blonde bride in flowing white half obscuring the groom’s face. A small silver insert shows through the cut-out church window and the inside reads: “To shower you with wishes / For happy years together, / And sunshine always in your hearts / No matter what the weather!”
It is raining today. It has been raining since last night, and it is cool for July 4th. The room I sit in is filled with the few possessions I brought back from my mother’s apartment in New Mexico a year and a half ago. I have a picture of her and my dad on their wedding day framed and sitting on the dresser here. They look like teenagers to me in that picture, so young and so thin and so innocent. This room also holds the files of my late husband– the paperwork he had in his apartment when he died. His ashes still sit in the box from the funeral home.
I look at the wedding card and the silver in my mother-in-law’s box and I look at my mother’s plain and sturdy silver on the floor next to it, and I start to cry. I wonder if those women– both married in the fifties– felt that the weight and richness of this silver would sustain their marriages? The idea of marriage seems so simple in these images from the 50’s– get a husband, get a set of silver, have children– and everything else will fall into place! My husband and I shunned these kinds of gifts when we were getting married– saw them as materialistic and unnecessary. But how many times have I wished I had this nice heavy silverware for my table! It seems so solid and long-lasting– is that what my marriage lacked? Tradition? Stability?
My mother, with her no-nonsense approach to life, left my father when I was thirteen, thumbing her nose at the 1950’s era model of family life and insisting that women don’t need a man in their lives to be happy. For her, the weight of the silver was a burden that connected her to her past– the snobby east coast, Vassar, and her parents’ expectations. She lived alone in New Mexico for twenty years, painting the landscape and smoking like a chimney until her silver became tarnished from lack of use and the box it came in became sticky from the bacon-greased, cigarette smoky air of her apartment.
My mother-in-law’s silver is clean and polished. We used it at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for the 20 years she hosted them. How can she part with it? I do know that her heart was not always filled with sunshine in the almost 60 years she has been married. But the silver served her well. That I cannot deny. She has taught me more about love than anyone else in my life.
And did my mother’s austerity serve her well? I think I am crying because I do not believe it did. I see my mother’s plain silver and remember her eyes rolling at other people’s frivolity. Then I remember her cramped and dirty apartment, so far from the people who loved her, and I wish, instead, that she had used the silver, polished it, laid it out on the table and invited us in for dinner. She was not meant to be June Cleaver, that I know. But I wish she had not shut herself away in a box.
So, I will take her silver out of the box and I will put my mother-in-laws silver in. I will take my mother’s no-nonsense grit and strength as I navigate my own years of loneliness since my husband’s death. I will take my mother-in-law’s delicate, well-used silver and I will use it– that’s all– just USE it, to serve my children a meal when they are home. To share food with good friends. To be with people with love.
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