Names, part two

And what about my middle name?

And interestingly enough, this one is just as complicated. Even more so in the last year or so, because of some significant changes in our family.

Your middle name, I told him, is just as strong as your first name, because that was a case where I stood up to Matt and told him that we were going to be following his culture's naming tradition for the first name, but in my family, middle names especially are in honor of an important family member, whether living or not. And at that time, the person I most wanted to honor with the middle name was my brother Daniel.

It's complicated now, because my brother Daniel is now my sister Valerie, and between that and changes in our relationship with each other, I'm starting to understand a little more about why Jewish tradition perhaps favors only naming after deceased relatives. But at the time, it was more than just the name that I wanted to give to my son.

My youngest sibling and I have a pretty large age gap - I was a freshman in high school when my mom gave birth, and that age dynamic guided a lot of our relationship. We would have sleepovers in my dorm room at college occasionally, and my sibling would marvel at the fact that I lived in a city that was not huge by any means, but was larger enough than the town that we grew up in that we could have a pizza delivered right to us. There were a lot of phone calls and letters, and sad teary goodbyes when I would have to go back to school after visiting home.

It wasn't always certain, though, that our relationship would be close. I'd had a lot of conflicts with my mom as a teenager and felt very angry and unsure when she told us that she was pregnant. Like the situation I later found myself in, it was unplanned and with a partner who left much to be desired, and as an adult I feel so heartbroken thinking about how alone my mom must have felt in her own experience at the time.

The second I laid eyes on the baby in the hospital, it was like every bit of anger melted away. This was a little person who could heal misunderstandings and who could repair broken hearts. This was someone who was not originally part of the family plan, but who made our family complete in a way we could never have expected.

And that, also, was a legacy I wanted for my Noah Daniel. Someone who was part of God's plan for me and for my family, who would make me grow in ways I had not imagined, and who would fill in a piece of my heart that I had not yet known was missing.