Before they were born, I remember floating around in a pregnancy-induced bliss (must've been 2nd trimester), creatively imagining names for our impending children.
I wrote out the options in swirly script, I stenciled them on nursery walls, mocked up birth announcements - "Johnene and Eric can hardly contain the love they feel and must herald along with the angels the arrival of..."
Anyway... our beautiful girl was given the equally beautiful name Maddie Joy and was quickly followed by her adorable, but masculine brother, Parker John. Lovely names, the first literally the emotion we felt toward, well, both the children and the second, an adoring tribute to the many Johns (and Johnenes) on my side of the family tree. Well done us. Maybe.
In hindsight,
after a two weeks of summer vacation,
and two preteens,
I would take a different approach.
Allow me to explain.
Growing up, my brother *lovingly* coined the phrase "Prison Voice" to describe the change that occurred to our mother's voice when she was angry. (As in, "Watch out, Mom's using the Prison Voice. You may want to have dinner at a friend's house.") Not so much a tone, but a growl. As teens and young adults, we belittled it into ineffectiveness.
With 11.5 years of parenting and the aforementioned 2 weeks of summer vacation under my belt, I feel I may have undersold the Prison Voice. It may legitimately have a place in every mother's repertoire. I have used it this week and subsequently have realized it is very hard to growl the name Joy. Hmmm. Who'da thought?
But to all you parents-to-be, I would strongly suggest finding your own Prison Voice long before you stencil that name on the wall and give the moniker a test run in that way. Trust me, no matter what marshmallowy bliss cloud you are floating on right now, that is the way you will repeat that name the most.
No comments:
Post a Comment