What's in a name?

"Wherefore art thou"?  Well, I'll tell you.  Despite what every ninth grader I ever taught thought, wherefore means why, not where, and Juliet just wants to know why the hell Romeo is a Montague.  It's so hard to try to choose the right name for your son or daughter.  If you are a teacher, you have to go through all of your old students and hope that a name you liked your entire life wasn't ruined by somebody's crappy kid.  You figure in high school, you average around 100-120 kids a year.  That's a lot of names to eliminate. 

I feel like I was fairly lucky when it came to our first.  I always wanted a junior, and it worked out well that John was already named after his father.  So we had a third; sort of.  In our family, the tradition is to have different middle names.  Works for me!  John Joseph, John Gary, John James.  I'm so lucky I was able to name my son after my husband and our fathers.  I love that his name is so meaningful to us. 

For our second, the decision was much harder.  When we found out we were having another boy, we struggled with a name.  We (I) had always wanted to name a baby girl after my Grandfather, Reese Freeman.  Reese has become so commonly a 'girl' name that it seemed to fit.  We really liked Jacob, but it was just a name, it didn't mean anything to us.  Joseph is the other family name that we love, but we didn't want to take that from John's brother Joe. So here we were, looking all over the internet for 'meaningful' names.  I kept coming back to Reese.

My Grandfather was a lot of things.  He was a father.  He was a friend.  He was a twin.  He was a confidant.  He was a Pearl Harbor survivor. He was an alcoholic.  He was my idol.  He raised 6 girls and 1 boy; and despite what it may have been like growing up with him at the dinner table; he loved his family and did his best to put food on the table (the miracle that happened after the food was bought, that was ALL Nanny).  I've heard so many stories of what it was like to grow up with him, and not sugarcoated, it sounds like sometimes it sucked.  Luckily, raising 7 kids wore him out a little bit so by the time I came around, 12 years younger than the youngest cousin, he was much calmer.  Could have been the beer, but I like to think it was just calm.

My Poppy probably suffered from PTSD, but during and after WWII, that wasn't widely diagnosed, so unfortunately there are hundreds of thousands of veterans from WWII and Vietnam that didn't receive the help they needed; but I digress... The Poppy I remember woke up about 4 every morning (which I didn't understand when I was little and I sure as hell don't understand at 30), he sat at the kitchen table and played solitaire for a few hours.  It never gets that cold in Atlanta, but on the really chilly days he would start the woodburning stove out in the finished patio.  He'd let the chill burn off the house; or in the summer the dew dry off the trees and grass.  He'd play until 7ish, when my Nanny woke up and shuffled in her housecoat into the kitchen.  I don't remember ever seeing him eat anything but peanuts until dinnertime.  I'm sure he did; I just don't remember it. 

Every day my Poppy had to leave the house.  I don't know why, he just did.  After he passed, my Great Uncle, his twin came from Ohio to Georgia for the funeral.  His wife told my mom, just in passing, that Uncle Richard left the house every day.  It's interesting to me how connected twins can be.  I definitely get that trait from him, I get itchy staying in all day.  I guess at 70 it's worse.  Those days were great, he'd say 'Jessica, let's go' and I'd just go, never really knowing where we were going.  The most I remember was going to Battles, the grocery store.  It was in a little strip mall, and sometimes we'd walk down.  I remember a book store was there, and at the store he'd say, 'pick something out', and so I'd ask for a book, and he'd say, 'Naw, how about a candy bar or something'.  So I'd get a candy bar.  I've gone through many thoughts as to why he said this, starting at 10, he didn't want to wait for me to pick out a book, at 20, he didn't care about reading (not true btw), at 30, books are fricken expensive and that stuff adds up WAY faster than candy bars!

The best thing I remember about my Poppy was that he loved his family, sometimes to a fault, but always with his whole heart.  He didn't always know how to show it, but it was there.  I'm glad I met my Poppy after everyone was out of the house and he was retired.  He was always extremely blunt; when the movie "Pearl Harbor" was released he was invited to see the premiere in downtown Atlanta.  When he was interviewed for The Atlanta Journal Constitution, the reporter asked him what he thought of the movie.  He said, "I don't know about all that love stuff, but that's how it happened, you just picked up whatever gun you could find and started shooting."  That pretty much sums him up.  The truth, just the truth, and nothing but the truth.  He was a much softer man than I hear about in stories, and he wasn't lovey dovey or outwardly affectionate, but damn did that man make me feel special.  I loved him more than I could put into words. I miss him and my Nanny daily.  As anyone that has lost someone close to them can attest; ten years later it still hurts that he's gone. 

So my Poppy was many things.  A father.  A husband.  A veteran and American hero.  An idol.  And if I could give my son any gift in the world, I'm so glad I gave him the gift of naming him after such an amazing man.