There’s a new namesake in our family, and no seismograph is vast enough to measure the earthquake in my heart.
Our family has had a year of loss that bloomed into joy. My beloved, intrepid father, Tom, died last July at age 92. I visited him often in his later years, and we FaceTimed daily between South Bend and Denver. The night before he passed, we rambled on for an energetic hour about election politics, gardening conundrums, and the four public library books he’d just downloaded to his iPad. His passing closes a generational chapter for our family. Nothing is the same.
But still we tumble forward. And a month ago, our eldest daughter welcomed her second son, and asked if it would be OK to name him Thomas, after my father. I was unprepared for my burst of tears as I nodded yes. This generous act has the glow of magic.
Naming is one of humanity’s great responsibilities. Writer Vicki Hearne’s evocative collection of essays titled Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name examines what it means to see animals as individuals. Every expectant parent knows, as does any child who’s agonized over naming a pet, the weight and worry that comes with hoping you get it right. To name is part making a claim (“You are mine!”) and part benediction (“May this name carry you where you want to go!”).
I love every iteration of the name Tom. It drums like a heartbeat. I love the soft trochee of Thomas, and the iambic music of the Spanish, Tomás, which my dad answered to when my mom signed them both up for a late-in-life language immersion trip in Oaxaca. In my mom’s sweetest moments, she called my dad Tommy. To my sister and me, he was Dad, Daddy, or Daddio.
His great-grandson, tiny Tommy, is not the first namesake in our family. Decades ago, my sister gave her son Thomas as a middle name, and her daughter shares my mom’s middle name, Ella. And our first grandson’s middle name, Lindon, continues a paternal line from another family branch.
Different from being a “junior,” a namesake is a more impressionistic relationship — a sounding bell with room for a unique echo. And perhaps because my father’s absence is still so present, and because his month-old namesake has the same olive coloring, his dark cap of hair with finely arching widow’s peak, and the same juicy earlobes, breathing in this fresh and wriggling human somehow feels like … remembrance.
Of course, every act of naming is a kind of name-saking, isn’t it? We choose names for children based on our own connotations and for the music of the syllables. In my 34 years of college teaching, I’ve witnessed many waves of naming, from the Tiffanies and Crystals to the confusing cluster of Christy/Kiersten/Christines, and the twists on spelling that parents choose to signal: “This child is special!”
Ultimately, we namers do our best. But there’s a long human practice of reclaiming that power and renaming ourselves — from the political act of formerly enslaved people determining their emancipation names, to writers crafting a nom de plume, to people simply preferring a nickname. When young people today rename themselves as their identities evolve, then, they are tapping into a significant tradition.
Now, when I cradle my father’s tiny namesake, Tommy, I see the intelligence and humor in his ocean-sparkled eyes, and remember my father. He absolutely loved babies, and his face unfolded like a map of delight when his grandchildren played with his hand-crafted wooden boats and smooth hand-painted blocks. He loved coaxing grins out of the great-grandchildren he lived to meet. My father’s final magic act happened a few days after he died: My sister and her husband were sipping coffee in their quiet morning kitchen, when suddenly the radio burst to life to play one song — the upbeat Lesley Gore hit, “Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows.” That song was featured in the 1963 movie “Ski Party,” the year our parents married, after meeting in a Colorado ski lodge. Now I sing these fizzy lyrics to my own grandsons: “Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows/ Everything that's wonderful is sure to come your way/ When you're in love to stay.” Oh, Daddio, we are.
Music: "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" by Lesley Gore
