A Rose By Any Other Name

When people talk about the stress of moving they usually focus on the physical aspects of it, such as the box packing and the final cleaning. That’s measurable. You gauge that stress by the number of hours to load a truck, or the cost of the cleaning service, or the handful of painkillers for your lower back!

What you can’t measure is the feelings. How do you calculate the sensation of walking one last time through empty rooms where dust hangs in unfiltered sunbeams and footsteps echo gloomily throughout the house? How do you explain how difficult it is to breathe as you exchange one more hug goodbye? How do you measure the mixed senses of anticipation and disorientation? How do you measure the hope that your kids will make friends at school or that the neighbours will invite you in for a drink? How do you calculate the confusion of meeting every parent in your child’s grade level on the same night and trying to sort out their names and which kids go with them?

I will never learn people’s names! As it is, I’m not great at remembering names when I first meet people. That’s because, as I’m reaching out to shake hands, I say “nice to meet you” but I’m usually thinking, “oh, I like her hair” or “he doesn’t look anything like his son” or “that’s a nice jacket” or some ridiculous thing that serves only to cloud my memory and cause a complete blank on the important detail: the name!

In St. Louis, you have to learn A LOT MORE names than anywhere else. That’s because you have to learn the nicknames. No-one here uses their real names. It’s true! As I go through the school directory, where families are listed alphabetically and then by grade, I find hundreds of perfectly plain names like Robert and Catherine, which are twinned cheerfully with other monikers. I have spotted (“Kitty”), (“Katie”), (“DeeDee”), (“Mimi”), (“LuLu”), (“Fifi”), (“Tripp”), (“Chip”), (“Chase), (“Mac”), (“Tad”), and (“Cricket”).

The nicknames are almost always cute, you know what I mean? I’m dying to meet them to see if they match their adorable names! Do cute names get attached to cute people? What’s in a name? According to Juliet, whose famous love for Romeo is greater than their respective families’ hatred for each other, “A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet...” In other words, his name didn’t affect her feelings for him.

The pet names that are short forms of the longer given names make sense to me. I myself use the shorter 3-letter abbreviation of my given name. It’s the ones that have nothing to do with the real names that confuse me. How will I ever learn everyone’s names? It’s not just the children either. I mean, when Toff graduated back in ‘79, he didn’t ever put Christopher on his business cards and, although he and his wife Lexo have three sons called Robert, Michael and Lucas, you’ll only ever hear them called to dinner as Bobby, Cal, and Luker.

My husband and I don’t have nicknames. He is James. His mother called him James. His friends call him James. I call him James. In St. Louis, I introduce him to everyone as James and they immediately – with a warm and cheerful Mid-Western handshake and smile – call him JIM. I still can’t get used to that. It just sounds so funny to me. He’s just not a JIM.

But, nicknames or pet names are expected – even anticipated – here. Most documents and forms ask for the “legal” given and family names as well as the name you commonly use. Even the presidents all had nicknames! John F. Kennedy was Jack. Theodore Roosevelt was Teddy. Bill Clinton didn’t mind Bubba. Lyndon Johnson liked LBJ. Eisenhower was commonly called Ike.

If we’re going to fit in here, we need nicknames. James could be “J”; a cool handle that says “hip” or “random” or whatever is the right word for cool these days. But what would I be? What if I just use the name of an author I like? Call me SAYERS or AUSTEN. That’s it! AUSTEN! Doesn’t that just say mysterious but adventurous!?

Bye for now,
Austen.