Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

I’ve been reading with some amusement the recent headlines about baby names.  It seems that, as happens a couple of times a year, new stats on baby-name popularity have been released, and that affords people an opportunity to let loose with their own “rules” of naming.  Nothing with alternate spellings, nothing too popular, nothing too unusual, nothing that’s a noun, etc.

We’d rather not run into trouble naming our kids something that their Southern grandparents, their Low-German grandparents, or their British playmates find unpronounceable or ugly (I’m still miffed that my Spanish teacher said “Erin?  Really?” with such a look of bafflement), but the world is big and it’s a bit difficult satisfying all of those requirements.  Not to mention that, when I mentioned possible names to my parents when I was pregnant with Katherine, I was amused to see alternating looks of pleasant surprise and distaste cross their faces–as in, they never had the same expression about a particular name.  And that’s just two people!

It would be nice to name our children after family members, particularly those who are no longer with us, but even if I did so I’d rarely hear my child’s name pronounced the same way as that of the family member–a difference of languages, accents, and the passing years.  I am always glad to hear that someone has named her son David after his fiery great-grandfather, because I think family ties are important, but when it comes to naming my own children I think I’d be as apt to be reminded of the differences as much as the inheritance.  Similarity works in interesting ways when you have been trained to think like a literature student 🙂

I always thought I’d be really into naming.  I mean, I spent months mulling over names for pets (or potential pets) as a kid.  I’ll admit that one of the things I first liked about Sydney was his name (well done, Dora!).  And I work with literature for a living: rife with names, many of which mean particular things that are significant within the novels themselves, or as a result of those novels’ publication.  Several names from literature have particular ties to my own work (Clarissa of Mrs. Dalloway or Quentin of The Sound and the Fury).  But I also know that my associations with those names can change, do change, with each month I work with them, and I am tied to no literary character like I am to my own child.  So, at least for me, any initial significance of a name will be seriously outweighed in about two months.

Nor am I keen on giving my kid a name that ties him or her to a particular story that’s already been told.  Some names–Emma, for example–might be both prominent enough in literature (oh, Jane Austen, what an influence you’ve had on the naming world!) and common enough that you can get both variety and significance in one name.  But I want to make sure there’s room for my kid to grow up as something other than the deeply-flawed Emma of Austen’s novel.  Besides, we’ll never have as much money as the character had–or social influence–so it’s best not to start out life disappointed!  And I have no intentions of dying off so that my Emma could grow up as the sole woman of the house, etc.

What I do know is that, once we’ve picked a name and attached it to a new person, it will, in our world and in the worlds of those close to us, be the tag for “our kid.”  And then, once enough of a personality emerges (Day 2?), the child will make its own imprint on the name.  We’re hoping that Katherine will assert her teenage independence by announcing that she’d like to be called “Kate,” rather than by piercing something.  Wishful thinking, perhaps.

When we named Katherine we did so with a cluster of other names nearby, hoping we’d be able to give her a sibling at some point down the road.  Not a family-size-determining group, but just a cluster; Sydney suggested we name our firstborn “Eight” and see what kind of a reaction we got, but I vetoed that one.  When I’ve been asked if I’ll name my child after a character in Faulkner or Woolf, I reminded people that some of the most prominent characters are scoundrels, others are crazy, and still others are dead (and rotting!).  If you look around a bit more you just get names that would be better-suited to cows: “Eula” and “Buela,” anyone?

So, yes, we’re still working with the same list, but, as with Katherine, I’m not pinning anything on someone I haven’t met yet!  I should remember to take the list to the delivery unit, though . . .

Erin

We might be the only county in the United Kingdom not to get nailed with record-making snow and temperatures, but we are enjoying a week of temperatures around zero, some brisk wind, and a light dusting of snow each day.  It really makes the town lovely.  Katherine doesn’t seem to enjoy this weather, so I left her with Sydney while I took a walk in the park around noon today.  Snow on the ground and in the air made everything quiet and gave new shapes to the trees, the smaller birds were unusually active, and there weren’t many people about.  Although the weather has had a nice effect on the town, which is now decked out in holiday lights, in the peace of the parks the effect is absolutely stunning.

One thing that is unseasonable is our rather barren kitchen.  We forgot to order a big box of vegetables last week, so we’ve been working through some other things in our cupboards.  And I was sufficiently encouraged by the lack of vegetables to run out and buy things for a really decadent pizza: goat cheese, roasted peppers, sundried tomatoes, and a drizzling of olive oil with fresh basil and garlic.  I’m going to make it again before our new vegetables arrive on Monday!

Since Katherine isn’t such a fan of the cold I’ve taken a shortcut through one of the malls on my way to run errands recently.  Each time we passed through the mall in the past week something struck me as odd, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Finally, on my third such run today, I figured it out: I was hearing American Christmas music.  I have heard plenty of English choirs singing carols with their high vowels, but when it comes to popular Christmas music it seems everyone turns to American music.  Usually from the fifties.  Often with a slight Southern accent.  Go figure.

Erin

Our Thanksgiving week passed rather swiftly.  I’ve gotten sleepier and sleepier as I’ve gotten more pregnant, and Sydney finds himself sympathetic to my plight, so we’re all having a hard time dragging ourselves out of bed at reasonable times of the morning.  I think Katherine is amused by us.

On Wednesday Sydney worked a long day in order to get a chapter ready to send off to his committee.  As we proofread it late in the evening we engaged in our usual rather silly (late-night) discussion of philosophical style:

“Do you really have to make even simple words difficult?”

“???”

“You use ‘will’ to mean ‘I will go to the store’ and also ‘the will is the subject of much medieval philosophical thought.  I never know which it’s going to be, but I am learning that ‘will’ is a booby-trap in your papers.  And must you structure all of your sentences as if they were translated directly from Latin?”

“What, you’d prefer the contortions of your literature papers?”

* * *

On Thursday we also made a couple of dishes to take to a friend’s Thanksgiving dinner.  One of my college suitemates, Courtney, happens to be doing a Ph.D. in philosophy at Oxford, so I’ve been very glad to find a familiar face here.  She and I (plus two Canadians) got to try to explain American Thanksgiving to a bunch of Englishmen at a late-evening dinner.  Katherine was so awed by the number of people sitting around the table (and, probably, by the late hour) that she was on exceptionally good behavior, flirting and smiling and demanding cornbread all evening long.

Erin

Erin

We currently have 63 wooden blocks littering our living-room floor.  Hey, I like blocks.  Katherine just dug through the pile and suddenly brought me one.  She turned it around in my hand to show me the picture on the side and said “Duck!”  I didn’t know that our blocks contained a picture of a duck, but she managed to find the one in there and haul it out to show me.  Well done, kiddo!  I guess all of those trips to the park pond and the rubber ducks in the bathtub have paid off!

Erin

As I’m slipping my key into the lock, preparing to duck into the house, I hear announced from across the street: “Here is a typical Oxfordshire house.  Stone walls, here, you see, stone walls, original work, quite old . . .”  I turned, realizing that my house was suddenly the scrutiny of about 30 people on a walking tour of Oxford.  But I kept my mouth shut, lest they be let down in their visions of “typical Oxford” by an American accent.

Erin

P.S.  A couple days later, and I’m asked by an American man across the street, “How old is it?” as I pause to open the door and push the stroller in.  I’d better become an expert in its history!

When I walked into the midwife’s office on Tuesday, armed with my sheaf of medical records, I thought I was fully prepared for the appointment.  But I was greeted with, “And your blood pressure, height, and weight?”  I repeated “My blood pressure?” back to her, hoping to indicate that I needed a bit more information, but it seems to have only made me appear slow.  Eventually I learned that there was a machine in the clinic lobby where I should determine those three things before coming in to my appointment.

Still reeling from the idea that I’d be taking my own measurements in the middle of a crowded waiting room, I backed out and confronted the machine.  I probably wasn’t at my sharpest: Katherine had kept us up for the previous couple of nights, so I was having to work pretty hard to keep up with curveballs.  When I put my arm through the blood pressure cuff it made a series of loud beeps–and continued beeping.  Somewhat embarrassed at making such a ruckus–small room, lots of people, loud noise–I had a hard time not ripping my arm out of the cuff when it didn’t let go after a couple of minutes.  But I was, eventually, released.

Then I confronted the height and weight machine.  Simple, right?  The scale was small, so I had to balance carefully on the back edge so as not to touch the machine in front.  I know I’m pregnant, but I’m not THAT large just yet.  Then I bent down to catch the screen at the right angle only to read “Stand up straight for height determination.”  Okay, so a quick pop back up so that I wouldn’t be measured incorrectly, but then I needed to duck again in order to read the subsequent directions, which were rolling across the small screen at the height of my stomach.  Eventually the machine decided it was through with me, beeped loudly, and printed out a receipt with my height and weight on it.  Most of the paper, though, was devoted to information about my body mass index (BMI).  Thanks, guys.  I was surprised it didn’t also offer me a lecture about proper eating and exercise habits to encourage me to bring my weight down.

The confusion continued throughout the appointment, as I tried to convert the midwife’s terms to something I recognized.  Have I had a scan?  The sudden image of myself getting stuck as they slid me into an MRI machine (“brain scan” being the only term that came to mind) probably didn’t help me come up with “ultrasound” any more quickly.  And it continued . . .

Erin

The hand-holding isn’t because Katherine needs any help walking.  She just needs herding, since she doesn’t always respect paths and garden beds.

Erin

She has really gotten into “collecting,” spending a good deal of her day trying to gather all of her favorite things into her arms at once.  We’re hoping it’s a sign of a careful steward–rather than a greedy kid in the making.

Erin

If you want to put leftover dough in the fridge, you might want to use an “unnecessarily” large container:

Sydney