Show, Don't Tell

I went to a writing workshop over the weekend.  I didn’t know what to expect when I walked in the door.  The facilitator was a woman who has written dozens of children’s books and several adult books based on her life living with different cultures around the world.  She gave use plenty of advice; things like, “don’t quit your day job” and, “long words are not always better.”

We were told how to work through writer’s block and how to cut unnecessary descriptions to make our writing more powerful.  We listened as she crafted sentences in multiple ways to demonstrate her points.

The most interesting advice, in my mind, was, “show, don’t tell.”  This means that, “I was distraught that I had forgotten to bring my stuffed monkey on vacation,” would be better expressed as, “I couldn’t sleep the entire week of vacation.  Without my stuffed monkey to clutch, the hours of darkness ticked slowly by while I counted cracks in the ceiling and listened to the hum of the ice machine in the hallway.”  This sentence has no bearing in reality, of course.  I am a 41-year old woman and I certainly don’t need the security of a stuffed monkey in order to sleep.

With this advice in mind, I think of how to show, not tell, of my desire for a child.  What can I say to make it clear?  I could say, “The holidays bring out my maternal instincts,” but that doesn’t make an impact.  How about….

“Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year, but also one of the most difficult for me.  I watch families pile out of their cars in the church parking lot on Christmas Eve and my heart aches.  I think of the things I did as a child with my mother in preparation for Christmas.  I want to teach my child to roll out cookie dough, not so thick that it won’t cook through, but not so thin that it burns too easily.  I want to make paper chains and see my child leap out of bed each December morning to tear a loop off the chain and count down to the big day.  I want to teach my child how to wrap presents, planning each cut of the shiny paper to maximize how many gifts can be wrapped from each roll and saving the small scraps in a neat pile for the inevitable tiny stocking stuffers that are purchased on December 23^rd.  I want to watch her eyes shine when I demonstrate the ‘zip!’ of scissors sliding along curling ribbon and show the seemingly magical spiral of ribbon it produces.  I want to open the tiny windows of an advent calendar, building the story of Jesus’ birth sentence by sentence over a month.  I want to teach my child the art of making Slovakian nut rolls, how to roll the sweet dough and how a tiny pile of brightly colored orange zest, fragrant with essential oils, can transform a bowl of ground walnuts into something surprisingly tasty and complex.  I want to sit down in front of the television on cold evenings and share the stories of Rudolph, Frosty, Kris Kringle, mice who build musical clock towers, and a small boy clutching a security blanket on a dark stage, teaching the true meaning of Christmas.  I want to have to eat plates of cookies that have been left by a hopeful child and throw stones at the roof to mess up the snow and make it look like flying reindeer have been there.  I want to come home from church at midnight and be awakened at dawn by a child who is bursting with the excitement of finding out what has been left under the tree.  I want to decorate a tree, not with shiny balls that all match, but with a haphazard collection of ornaments made from yarn, construction paper, and glue.  I want to have to clean glitter off the dog’s nose and vacuum it out of the carpet for weeks.  I want Christmas to be less orderly and predictable, more crazy and chaotic.  I want to be a mother.”

The Name Game

In the absence of any adoption-related tasks at the moment, my husband and I have been going back to a game we have played for years: Name the Baby.  We can sit and discuss (translation: argue) over this topic for hours.  The fact that we have never come to any sort of agreement makes me wonder how we are ever going to resolve this.  If I were giving birth to the baby myself, I am somewhat certain that I could play the “but I just suffered through nine months of pregnancy and twelve to twenty-four hours of painful labor” card to get my way, but that card is not in the hand I am holding.

At least neither of us is a teacher.  I remember sitting with a good friend and going through a baby name book when she was pregnant for the first time.  Name after name after name was rejected because she had had a child by that name in her class and it had negative connotations for her.

The main sticking point is that my husband feels that the baby ought to reflect our genetic heritage.  But not just for one of us, for both of us.  Which means my Swedish/Norwegian/Slovakian background and his Hungarian/Scottish/English/Dutch/whatever background do not intersect on any level. 

For example, I love the name Mia.  I could easily envision naming a baby girl Maria as a tip of the hat to both my mother and my sister, but using Mia as a nickname.  Nice, right?  I am told we can’t do that because neither one of is Italian.  I fail to see the logic in this, but I cannot seem to argue my point effectively enough.  Using this argument, our poor child would be dubbed Babygirl or Babyboy at birth and that would be it.

Using the ethnic heritage guideline, I suggest Bjorn.  I think my dad would have gotten a kick out of a grandson named Bjorn.  This is scoffed at, along with Sven, Stieg, and Borger.  My Swedish-ness is not powerful enough to overcome his objections.

I abandon the ethnic heritage theme and go to family names.  My husband’s first and middle names are Geoffrey and St. Ivan, with his middle name coming from his grandmother’s maiden name.  I think that is a cool name, plus it looked great on wedding invitations.  But I am told that he doesn’t want to name a son after himself, partly because he wants something that is easier to spell and partly because he feels it might in some way offend his older children, as if he loves them less because they don’t bear his name.

Biblical names are nice.  The name Isaac means "laughter" in Hebrew.  Knowing the two of us, this would be a very fitting name.  However, the 1970's kid in me thinks that I will always subconsciously be expecting my child to bring me a drink on the Lido deck.

I do strike gold with my next suggestion.  My father’s name was Bruce Ralph and his father’s name is Paul David.  We manage to agree on some combination thereof, probably Bruce David.  I only veer away from David Bruce because I suspect that Geoff would refer to him as “David the Bruce”, which he threatens to do.

On to girl’s names.  This is harder.  Our mothers names are Mary and Peggy.  I don’t even want to contemplate the family therapy if we chose one over the other.  (That being said, I love you both and would be honored to name a child after you.)  Also, my sister called dibs on Mary years ago, which hardly seems fair, but who am I to argue with dibs?

My paternal grandmother was named Ethel Victoria.  A lovely early-20^th century name, but not one that I could see using in this day and age.  Names on my mother’s side of the family are very traditional.  Mary, Ann, Helen, Agnes, Margaret.  Lovely names, all.  My grandmother was named Mary Magdalene.  This is beautiful and meaningful, but perhaps a bit….much.  I file away several of these names for future arguments.

I curse my stupidity at ruining the chances of using several of my favorite names.  Since I was a kid, I always loved the name Mollie.  I just picture a little girl in pigtails and overalls, swinging on a tire that hangs from a tree, when I hear the name.  But as anyone who knows me already knows, my beloved Scottie dog was named Mollie and I can’t imagine having to explain that to a future child.  “I loved you so much when you were born that I named you after the dog.”  (It would give my child something to talk to Oprah about, anyway.)  The same goes with another favorite name, Rosie, the name of one of our adopted greyhounds.

It turns out that we both love the name Alexandra.  It seems we are getting close to an agreement when he mentions that he thinks Xandy is a good nickname.  Not Sandy.  Xandy.  Back to the drawing board.

My husband had a very close relationship with his grandmother, whose name was Margit.  I like it and I suspect he would agree to using that name.  Maggie would be a good nickname.  Now if I can only keep thoughts of my aunt’s Dachshund out of my mind……