A Letter to Lucy

This photo was taken today, but I wrote the letter yesterday.

Dear Lucy,

Thursday morning and you're napping in your crib wearing oatmeal in your hair and a bird’s egg blue dress. You are lovely.

                                     

In this picture, you're just a few days old. Mommy and I are kissing your tiny head. 

I wondered who you'd become, my gray-eyed kitten. My little squawker. My baby bird.

I still wonder, but I worry less. You're not a kitten anymore, you're a cat! So smart and strong, determined and independent. You communicate so well. You're also sweet and So Damn Funny!

                                                 

Lucy, everyone who meets you falls in love with you immediately. You have this smile that just brings out the sunshine in people. People talk to you so sweetly and you make them laugh-- the pharmacist, the drunk homeless guy, sometimes even angsty teenagers! You smile with your entire face--those dimples, your sweet little pink cheeks, and those ocean-rock-gray eyes. You're a sparkler, Lucy. My little clown. You are light.

I'm so glad we named you Lucy.

As a little girl, I had so many dolls and I still remember all of their names. Names were very important to me. I always hoped I'd have a daughter, and I thought about what you'd be like. So when the doctor told me that there was a boy and a girl inside me, I was amazed that I had no name for you. Here are some pictures

of me as a little girl.

How could I not know your name? I listened to women who were not pregnant tell me that they knew what they were going to name their little girls, when they had them. They chose Ava, Ella, Emma, Emily, Sophie, Olivia... I heard over and over the pretty girl names. I saw them swirling in cursive writing in my head at night. These were the most popular names the year you were born. I went through the alphabet and tried to land on the letters I liked best. A, E, G, L, M, R, W... I couldn't find you in the letters.

I was tired of people asking and giving suggestions. I thought of telling them I was trying to decide between Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. "Which one do you think sounds more feminine?" I'd ask.

Some women say they've known all their lives what they wanted to name their children. I don't see how that could be possible. No one favorite name was consistent enough to withstand the many eclectic phases I have gone through since I was a little girl. Let's start from the beginning:

Jenny was my first favorite name. She was also my first best friend. Little did I know that every girl on every block in the 70s and 80s had a best friend named Jenny too (all of whom would become "Jen" in high school). Here's a picture of Jenny and me with her little brother. We were playing dress-up.

Jenny and I fought a lot. (I was a scrappy, bossy little girl).

When I was six, I went through a stage of appreciation for all names that sounded tough and ended in -i instead of -y, such as Randi, Brandi, Staci and Traci.

At ten, I might have given you a name with a double -ll, like Molly or Jill.

As a teenager, I claimed to be a "nonconformist." I kept cutting my hair shorter and shorter until there was nothing left! I'd probably have named your brother Thurston, after Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. You might have been Sinead O'Connor Tschaen.

In college I probably wrote a really bad story or poem in which I named you Ramona (Rae for short). I still like that name quite a bit, because of Ramona Quimby, a character in a series of books I cherished as a girl and can't wait to read with you.

                                               

                                                                                                Ramona Quimby

Unfortunately, Maggie Gyllenhall named her daughter Ramona, and for some reason that meant that I could not. In fact, Hollywood was to blame for snatching up a lot of my favorite girl names. Brooke Shields stole Rowan and Greer for her daughters. Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck took Violet. They can have Seraphina, but I loved Violet. (Mommy thought it was too "flowery" anyway).

I wanted a special and unique name for you, like Maeve. Maeve was a girl I used to babysit when she was five. Now she's a teenager! But Maeve is one of a kind, and I wanted you to have your own name.

This is a photo of Maeve Rose in Kindergarten, when I lived with her.

I thought, "If not Maeve, how about Mavis?" I thought it was close to Maeve, but with a special spunk to it.

"Absolutely not!" said Mommy. She hated it. I pouted over Mavis for quite a while.

So then you were Carson. I had been reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

                                        

                                                                                                      Carson McCullers

Carson reminded me of a wiry, whip-smart girl, and I liked it. But then Mommy sent me a link to a Pottery Barn Kids furniture item called "The Carson Desk." And I did not want to name you a Pottery Barn name. Carson McCullers' name was really Lula Carson Smith, anyway. We closed the book on Carson.

Next, you were Murray!

Murray? Like a short Jewish guy with male pattern baldness?

Like the dog's name, Murray? Or the auto part store, Murray's?

Yes! What can I say? I loved the name. 

To me, it was pretty and spunky and cute. I saw you being a cute little tough girl running around the school yard with that name. "Honey, Murray's kicking again!" I'd holler from the bathtub. But people seemed to think that I'd ruin your life if I named you Murray. And I had to give it some thought since we were already potentially ruining your brother's life naming him Effram. So I let it go but secretly decided that I'd call you Murray anyway, regardless of what we named you.

                                       

 Nanny made a case for Lily. Lily Bean, in fact. She saw it on a commercial and had been obsessed with it ever since. But I already knew a few little girls with variations of Lily-names. One of my favorite students was named Liliana. She went by "Lil". She too is one of a kind.

                                                            

                                                                                             This is Lil dressed as Babar.

So you wouldn't be Lil, or Lily either. Mommy liked Josephine ("Joey") because it was your great grandmother's name on the Tschaen side. But I didn't like that name. Joey reminded me of the character played by Katie Holmes on a show called "Dawson's Creek" and Josephine reminded me of my late grandmother's friend who used to try to make me eat circus peanuts. You just weren't Josephine. Mommy said you couldn't be Clementine either. We were really stuck!

                                          

                                                               This is a photo of me talking to you in my belly. I called you "Legs" for a while.

While I was pregnant, I had thought a lot of my grandma, Dorothy. She would have loved you! In fact, when  you were born, I thought you looked a lot like her. I wanted to use her middle name, Mae. I like all those Southern-sounding names. I wanted to name you Willa! Willa Mae! "Not going to happen," said Mommy.

                                                                                        Dorothy Mae, my grandma

                                     

I was named after my great-grandmother, Bessie Morgan. Apparently, Bessie had a brother named Morgan M. Morgan, and the M. stood for Morgan! Mommy and I love that story, and we liked the name Morgan. Mommy actually has a cousin named Morgan too, on the Tschaen side. So we were going to name you Morgan.  "Morgan, stop punching your brother!" we'd tell you. That lasted a few weeks--the longest running decision we had made.

                                             Here's a picture of you when you were "Morgan."

But then I took another bath and changed my mind for the last time. I saw Morgan embroidered on a pillow in a Pottery Barn Baby catalogue, and I decided that it wasn't feisty enough.

But LUCY was!  

I was re-reading Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy. I had just pulled it off the shelf to read in the bath tub and read it again and just knew.

                                          

Mommy agreed. We finally had a name for you! 

"Are you sure she's not Edie? Or Finley? Or Tatum?" I asked.

Nope. We knew.

We also knew that Lucy was not necessarily a unique name. It was #70 on one of those popularity lists for 2009. So imagine our surprise when you were born so early and we gave you your name, and then met the parents of 3 other Lucy girls in the NICU!

"Oh no!" I thought. "There are going to be 3 Lucies in her kindergarten class!" 

That's okay. Even if there are other Lucies in your school, you will always be unique. The nurses said so when you were only a few days old! The x-ray nurse left, shaking her head about you. You had really put up a fight. She said, "Your Lucy--she be spicy!" And it's true!

You do be spicy!

But you're also sweet.

You are not Carson. Or Finley. Or Ramona. Or Josephine. Or Edie. You’re not Mavis. Okay, you’re not even Murray. You are Lucy and you’re my girl. I adore you.

Love, Mama