What’s in a Name?

We decided to name our sweet #6 after the Computer Guy’s grandfather. It’s a sweetly old-fashioned name that, truthfully, sounds better suited to a retirement community than a playground. It also sounds weirdly out of place when we rattle off our children’s names. It falls like a stone at the end of the sentence. Thud. We love it anyway.

Just imagining a small child with such an old man name is such an odd juxtaposition that the thought of it makes me smile. He won’t always be tiny. He will grow into his old man name, and perhaps by then it won’t seem to be dusty and old, but new and fresh. It doesn’t matter.

It is his name. We knew instinctively that it was right from the moment that I first jokingly proposed it to my husband and waited for all the reasons it wouldn’t work. I had suggested it with a laugh, but he listened to the meaning behind the jest.

The Computer Guy’s grandfather died and we miss him terribly. He was the laughing center of the whole family. The war veteran who bubbled over with emotion when his family was all together in one place. The respectable father of 6 and president of his church’s congregation who reveled in his old man status because it gave him license to flirt with all the pretty girls. The man who never forgot an embarrassing moment and teased his grandchildren mercilessly about the dumb things they had done, but couldn’t remember hurt feelings any longer than it took to apologize.

The patriarch of a family that, too often, rejected the lessons he sought to teach and the wisdom he tried to impart. Teasing us from the first baby about what we would do when we got to number 6. At the time, it seemed like a funny, teasing joke that old men tell and younger generations laugh at because they know better. Here we are at #6. Hoping that his little eyes hold the same twinkling smile and his mouth the same rollicking laughter his great-grandfather’s did.

It is an old man name and seems a little out of place for someone so fresh and new. I hope that it won’t always seem like an odd couple mix. I hope that once he finds his way in the world, our new guy’s heart will know the same love and compassion, his hands hold the same strength, that his arms will someday hold the same comfort and his soul will know the same sure and quiet faith.