There will be no surprise to any of you that I am excited to be a grandmother (bubu) in a few months! I wonder if this new being will be a he or a she and what gifts God will bestow. Will this person be musical, artistic, funny, smart, serious, athletic, or…..? And what name will the parents give this child? Here are some ideas from where we sit.
We have a father here with three children: two girls and a boy. His name is James. His kids? Jamie, Jamie, and James but the boy is called Scipio. We have a student named Peter Halber but some of his records say Royden and he goes by Spanky (he is 16 years old). A lot of our children have a formal name and a name they go by. Carly Ann goes by Nala, Julie Ann goes by Lulani, and Denisa goes by Elle. I don’t see the connection and when I ask, they don’t see the need for one. Several girls here are called Beauty and we have a Kyeoeo (pronounced key-yo-yo which is the name of a local flower). There are students with several names. One of our graduates has the first name Chrytle Hazle Lee, middle name Tigno and then her last name. When they put part of her first name as a middle name on her visa they had to start all over. Two of our favorites are Dylexia (girl) and Osmosis (boy). There is also the new student we got yesterday.
One of my favorite parents is a young mom named Leona. She has a teenage daughter who attends Co-op, Momo, and she also has a baby. I have chatted with Leona off and on all year and thought these were her kids. Oh no, she has two more that she puts at another school (this is actually fairly common here) and then she shows up yesterday with a young daughter who has been raised by paternal grandparents on an outer island. “What is her name?” I ask. “Ready.” “Ready?” “Yes, like are you Ready to go?,” she replies. O.K., Ready it is!
And then there is Journal. Journal is a nice, distinguished man who is probably in his forties. He is the father of another one of our grads, Annietha. One of our bolder teachers asked him if Journal was a common name here in the Marshall Islands and how his name came to be. He told us his father was in Kwajalein as a young man and saw a fat notebook on a shelf at work that was called “Journal.”
I thought I was entertained in the states with a girls named Liberty - middle name Bell, and Twinkle but these folks take naming to whole new levels! So to Marcia and Will, have fun figuring it all out, just name your kids something they can live with!
Some of you have asked about our “child.” Mischief is doing just fine. She loves living with a Cabana Boy and, other than the fact that she is possessed by some kind of sand bug that likes to bite her, she is completely acclimated to life here. Her newest game is fetching her ball in the lagoon. This morning I took her walking on the beach during a low tide. I throw the ball while I walk, she runs and gets it and we continue for a half mile or so. Sugar Pie and Buckwheat, the two strays that have adopted us, follow along loyally but care nothing about this silly game we are playing. Then all of a sudden Mischief changes course. She has turned to the water and isn’t to be dissuaded. So we play fetch in the water for a half hour. Below are the pictures of what happened when I thought she was too tired to play anymore and I was ready to come in!
I hope all of you are well and getting a little summer in your 63 degree Northwest! Love to you all, Becky
 |
| I've come in and she's just standing out there - "But I'm not done yet. I don't wanna come in!" |
 |
| Then before she came in she had to roll around in the coral sand - yes she is still a black dog! |
No comments:
Post a Comment