It's both forbidding and fulfilling when a newborn grandchild is given your own first name- almost as though he/she were a clone without complications. My first name is one that friends never would know I own, though it is common enough. A name I had more or less renounced through the years as cumbersome, having too many syllables, too long for a byline. Still, I admit it is attractive and can be shortened into a simple sometimes-too-cute moniker.
Katherine aka Katie, Kate, Kathy, Kat, Kay, etc.
Note that however one hopes to hide or renounce the official name, no easy way exists to write it off a birth certificate, or a marriage license. Thinking back, I might have preferred to keep the first of my given names and renounce or ignore the dull middle 'Ann.'
The gesture made by my son and daughter-in-law, parents of six-week-old Katherine Grace, is personally fulfilling in the grandest sense: acknowledgment, one hopes, of filial respect and affection. A honor of sorts. Daunting. There is the initial rush of flattery, the appreciation of continuity. On reflection, however, consider what this does to a newborn bearing the name of a living relative (me, the grandmother, in this case)?
Grandmotherhood is becoming a science.. Esoteric articles on familial relationships have expanded to include the outliers - those in-and-out second tier parental ties, the varieties of which are immense now that elders are staying around longer. When, indeed, elders more often than not are energetic professionals with lives of their own rather than the stereotypical spry wry oldster pictured in a rocking chair - ideally on a porch. I have several rocking chairs and several porches, as it happens. Even a hammock in the yard. I hope one day to be able to take those little ones on a swing through parts of the world I have come to love.
Katherine aka Katie, Kate, Kathy, Kat, Kay, etc.
Note that however one hopes to hide or renounce the official name, no easy way exists to write it off a birth certificate, or a marriage license. Thinking back, I might have preferred to keep the first of my given names and renounce or ignore the dull middle 'Ann.'
The gesture made by my son and daughter-in-law, parents of six-week-old Katherine Grace, is personally fulfilling in the grandest sense: acknowledgment, one hopes, of filial respect and affection. A honor of sorts. Daunting. There is the initial rush of flattery, the appreciation of continuity. On reflection, however, consider what this does to a newborn bearing the name of a living relative (me, the grandmother, in this case)?
Grandmotherhood is becoming a science.. Esoteric articles on familial relationships have expanded to include the outliers - those in-and-out second tier parental ties, the varieties of which are immense now that elders are staying around longer. When, indeed, elders more often than not are energetic professionals with lives of their own rather than the stereotypical spry wry oldster pictured in a rocking chair - ideally on a porch. I have several rocking chairs and several porches, as it happens. Even a hammock in the yard. I hope one day to be able to take those little ones on a swing through parts of the world I have come to love.
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