Family Names

My younger sister is having a baby. The final chosen name (so far, anyway) is Isabella. Not the favorite of the family, but infinitely more approved than the initial choice of Zoe. It seemed that after a few months of weekly baby-name-changing, a certain peaceful stability had finally settled in. However, after a recent Sunday visit, it would appear that this is not the case for my Nana.

Nana's stories, as those of most older Southern ladies, are typically so convoluted and overly detailed in irrelevant places that you have to wonder if she's actually spent hours crafting a brilliantly complex brain teaser of the Whodunit variety, as opposed to just genuinely considering it necessary that her listener comprehend what her distant family relation had just purchased when she ran into her at the mall. The mere act of acquainting us with the fact that this woman was in some way the progeny of my long deceased Great Aunt Dean took five minutes alone.

It was this distant family relation (fourth cousin? Fifth?) who delivered the havoc-inducing news to my Nana that her son and daughter-in-law intended to name their unborn little girl, of all things, ISABELLA. This news was delivered to my parents and myself in a tone that implied we were expected to gasp in horror, and to question her as to what we were going to DO about the fact that these family members that we see precisely...NEVER...have the audacity to select the same currently popular baby name that my sister chose. Instead we looked at her in confusion. After a long pause, wherein our silence was clearly interpreted as shocked distress, she continued with "but don't worry...the full name is Isabella Claire, and they say they'll call her Clarabelle."

Another long pause. Finally my mother hesitantly asked, "...Clarabelle?"

"Oh, you know how they do that in Dean's part of the family," Nana explained breathlessly. "They've got a Lelabelle, another Clarabelle, and you know Dean's REAL name was Zenabelle, and..."

If there were more specific examples after that I didn't register them. And based on the open mouthed expressions of amused awe and delight on the faces of my parents, they were too busy digesting the same fact that I was...that I have a rather close family member, whom I'd always known as Aunt Dean, whose real name to me, if you went by what her birth certificate stated anyway, was actually Aunt Zenabelle.

"Zenabelle?" asked my mom. My dad's face had settled into a contended goofy grin. "Yes, Zenabelle, you know." responded my Nana, as if this piece of information was common family knowledge and that therefore she was mildly irritated with us for holding up the more important points of the story over it.

"...how did they get DEAN?" As the in-law in the room, my mother was apparently the only one bold enough to ask these questions.

"Well honey she changed her name as soon as she turned sixteen, of course....anyway, I asked where Ronnie Dell was and she said he was at home with the other grand-baby, that one their son had with that other girl, the one they're having all that...what's that word, paternity nonsense with...and she told me that SHE doesn't see any need for any paternity test, that the other day that little girl picked up that little dog of theirs and threw it over the upstairs landing, and she and Ronnie Dell said they knew right then that that child was a Graves and that was all there was to it."

It took another five minutes or so to coax the information concerning the fate of "that little dog of theirs" out of my Nana. It landed on the couch, apparently, and is just fine, should you care.