Baby Memoirs: My Ever So Sweet Brielle

Brielle.  My sweet, ever so sweet, baby Brielle.   Much like a melodic song or enduring poem, the sound resonates a bit deeper every time I hear it.  Maybe it is the tone, and maybe it’s what it now means to me.   More likely however, it is what most parents feel after naming their firstborn child.  Whatever the case might be, I cannot get enough of thinking about and hearing of my sweet, ever so sweet baby Brielle. 

It’s pretty telling by now that my wife and I have selected the name for our soon to be baby daughter.  Just like knowing the gender of your pending little one, choosing a name moves you another giant step closer.  In my estimation, choosing a name is much different than many of the other milestones that occur throughout the stages of a pregnancy though.  This most certainly holds true for a father. 

Through the eyes of the father to be, creating a bond with your unborn child is an elusive task to be sure.   A mother is bound for nine months to “little her” or “little him”.  A mother’s body is transformed and feels the movements and the growth from deep within.   An unborn baby needs in every respect a mother in order to survive.  And ultimately it is the mother who delivers the child to this world. 

It’s pretty fair to say a “father to be” is quite a bit less important in comparison to a “mom to be” throughout the pregnancy.  Thus, the pending father needs to cling tight to whatever is offered at this stage of the process and participating in the naming is one of those lone chances.

Why should this be such an important occasion for the father?  It is because no matter how odd it seems to be, there is very little else that a “father to be” can do that carries any sort of tangible necessity on his unborn baby’s life.  Perhaps we are designed to be out collecting firewood, hunting down food and building huts to live in.  I do not really know.  The reality though is that even the best intentioned father is essentially a sideline cheerleader from the moment after conception all the way to the moment of birth.  We are nice to have around and can happily do whatever possible to offer up support and assistance, but our participation is not required in any sort of literal sense.  Naming your “soon to be” is about as close as it gets. 

Thinking of it all this way may sound cynical or strange to even consider, but the facts are the facts, and it is an absolute biological truth that a father is not needed during a pregnancy.   So it is probably not a  surprise that I took the naming process to heart and involved myself fully in all senses of the word.  On a totally different but strangely similar note, once there is a name, there is a daughter.  Your daughter.  In this case, it is my sweet, ever so sweet baby daughter Brielle. 

Let me back this all up about a month to give you some perspective.   For various reasons, my wife and I held off on thinking about or trying to find a name quickly.   I can speak only for myself here, but as mentioned above, the selection of a name makes it all quite real.  Without a name, there remains a barbed wire fence within that is able to guard your deepest anxieties and emotions from getting out.   My piece entitled “Though Shall Not Presume” may lend some further insight as to what exactly I mean by that.    

Whether the above is true or not, or for whatever other reasons there may be, both my wife and also myself took quite a while before even considering to address the naming process.   Of course, this was not a very popular position to take with our friends and family members.  All with a tremendous amount of love and interest of course, there is still only so many times you can say “no, we haven’t even thought about it yet”. 

It then dawned on me like a flash of light from far, far above how we should handle the situation.  I did my best not to crack a smile at this revelation, but my wife knew instantly I had stumbled upon some sort of sinister childlike idea and she wanted in.  I revealed to her that “our best defense is a good offense”.

This philosophy was first opined by military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu in 5^th century BC and has been widely quoted as an effective divergence strategy ever since.  Machiavelli, to Vince Lombardy, to Colin Powell and just about any sort of meaningful strategist in between has embraced the concept.  So if it was good enough to win Super Bowls and good enough to launch air strikes in the Gulf War, then it would no doubt be good enough for our purposes here. 

Let’s first talk about grandparents.   I am not a geneticist, although I do like to play one and I can pretty much guarantee there is genetic marker yet to be discovered that draws grandparent to grandchild in a way only a grandparent would know.  In evolutionary terms, it’s almost like a Darwinian insurance policy that a bond of this nature is created.  What I did not know is how dominant this “purported” genetic marker is.  It is powerful and it is beautiful .  I could practically write a book with my thoughts on this, but that is for another day.    

With all this in mind, it is little wonder that it was the Grandparents most guilty of the “have you thought of a name” grenades.   We knew full well at this point it was time to change our strategy and strike back on the offensive quickly, as we were at the time getting pummeled. 

Let me first qualify all of this.  One set of parents is anxiously awaiting their first grandchild.  The other set is a bit older and quite naturally they want us to get a move along in order for them to have all the good years available to be a part of this newest family gift.  So it is pretty fair to say, this pregnancy process is just about as momentous to them as it is to us, which we both appreciate beyond belief. 

Choosing a name is hard.  It is really hard.  Choosing a list of names is easy.  Judging the names that others have suggested is a breeze.  But choosing a single first and single middle name out of the countless thousands available is hard.  Indeed, it is really hard.  After all, this lone choice impacts a human being (your human being!) for the rest of his or her natural born life. 

So the strategy was simple.  We would turn the tables and ask each grandparent to come up with a single name that we would consider as a choice.  No, not a list of names.  A single first name and a single middle name.  And we needed it in seven days or their suggestion would be disqualified.   It would be our chance to go on offense and let them play a little defense fielding our daily barrage of “have you thought of a name” missiles.      

As to our counter strategy, we were in all honesty not just being revenge minded mischief-makers.  We were in fact quite curious as to what each grandparent would come up with.  Mind you, at this point we had very truthfully given almost zero thought to names and had extremely open minds.   We felt that one of the suggestions could perhaps send us in a direction we would not have arrived at previously.  At the very worst it would provide a very humorous way for the six of us to get together, drink a few Mimosas and all participate somehow in the announcement process.   We engaged in a similar, but slightly more toned down version of this when announcing the gender.   To create a little suspense, we had each of them write down their guesses and read them aloud prior to the “official announcement” and the spillover was a beautiful mini celebration we would all be together for. 

This “Name Game” was a bit more involved than choosing heads or tails though.  On one end of the spectrum, this exercise was fairly easy, as a name for a girl was already in mind for one set of grandparents. If my wife’s brother turned out to be my wife’s sister, a name had pretty much already been picked out.  As it turns out, my wife’s brother is in fact my wife’s brother, so the name of my wife’s non-existent sister would need to be put on ice for the following three decades. 

On the other end of the spectrum , the exercise proved a bit more challenging.  Let’s just say handing a book with 100,000 baby names to a known and self-admitted perfectionist is not a real good idea.  You can do the math from there. 

There was only one issue with the game that we had not previously considered and it was a major one for sure.  The problem we faced is that my wife and I were now actually needing to address the name and the clock was tick-tocking away on our own decision making as well. 

I’ve long tried to adhere to a philosophy that whenever a topic is being discussed and there is someone else in the room that knows more about that topic than myself, I will mostly subordinate my own speaking and listen as much as possible.  For example, as far as the childrearing and pregnancy aspects of this interesting journey, I have offered somewhere in the range of zero input.  Give or take. 

A name is far different though.  I love the written word in every possible way and it was time for me to step up from sperm donor to actually having some sort of lasting input on our new daughter to be.  For better or worse, there is just about nothing I do without thinking it through from every angle and then flipping it over and thinking it through again.  Among the short list of attributes I carry, I find this to be one of the better ones.   My wife agrees up to a certain point … after which she simply calls it crazy.  I am still not sure where that “certain point” resides and perhaps should think through asking her about it one day.    

Given our different modes of thinking, the plan was for my wife and I to set out individually to research and choose our top fifteen choices.   We were to then compare lists and see where we were at.   To say I was surprised by the similarities of our list is an understatement.   We had several of the same names, albeit many of them were spelled differently.  As an aside, it should also be noted that each of our lists contained more than one of the grandparental suggestions on it.  There was one name in particular though, that had never before been uttered by anyone.  In fact, it is almost unexplainable for us to both have this name on our top fifteen list given its’ uniqueness.   It took little more than an instant to know that our sweet, ever so sweet baby daughter was to be named Brielle.    

To know in an “instant” should not be confused with to know without careful thought or to have been made in haste.   As mentioned previously, the written word carries extreme significance to me and not far behind in this department is my wife’s own love of words as well.  Not to belabor the point, but it would be hard to understate the importance of words to the both of us.   The written word is literally what brought us together from day one and it has continued to play a role throughout the years of our relationship.  Again, all stories for another day perhaps.  

There is a verse from my favorite poem that has come to be the symbol of sorts for our love and devotion to one another.  The verse is actually inscribed on a keychain that I carry with me on a daily basis.  The poem is about a man’s undying love and eternal commitment to his beautiful “Annabelle”.    

So is it the similarity in sound of Annabelle and Brielle that first caught our ear?  Or maybe it is the connection and symbolism of Aubrye and Bill fusing together to create a single Brielle?   Or still maybe it is the meaning of Brielle; “heroine from above” that ultimately shaped our choice.  I cannot fully explain what ultimately drew the two of us to that name in such force.  Whatever the reason may be, there is no lack of certainty that it is now my privilege, my duty and my honor, to protect and always keep well, the girl we now know as our sweet, ever so sweet baby Brielle.

Comments

[Pamala Harris]

Every time I hear her beautiful name it reaches my heart in an unbelievable depth...my grandchild, our sweet Brielle. I look forward to the day she is able to read and understand your memoirs. At that point, she will see how very much her Daddy loved her even before she was born.

[William Foote]

As always, your thoughtful comments are always very much appreciated. I'm sure Sweet Brielle will not ever lack for love amidst our clan, which is a blessing to be sure.

[John]

Love those! I enjoy following your posts on facebook and rss!