By any other name

If you believe Juliet when she said “Take yer name and stick it where the sun don’t shine because I’m not getting screwed out of a good screwing on accounta your father thinks my father is a Veronese dickwad” (or words to that effect that also mentions “a rose” severally and sequentially), a name is just a name.

There’s a new name in my life: Owen North Case, born on Feb. 18, a strapping chap with lungs to suit his bulk. Almost ten pounds, this little bucko looks to have all the makings of the kind of son any one would want, if they did want. And this guy was so wanted. By mum and dad most certainly, and then unsurprisingly by some grandparents who had yet to experience the continuation of the race on such a personal note.

A grace note really. Though he’s but a few days old I have actually met the 12th generation Case to be born on this soil. It gave me pause to think that it has taken almost 400 years for Owen to get here. Every 33 years, or so, one of his ancestors was born (I am just twice as old as my 32 year old son). Those grand-cestors went about the serious business of staying alive through all the wars and plagues that could have winnowed the line with consequences so dire as there might never have been a Smoking Jacket. But the name lives, and the lad’s incipient blog, The Burping Cloth, is already as old as he is. It is most fortunate that we share the same great editor.

There was no agenbite of inwit that made my heart leap when I laid my eyes on his big blurry blue ones over this past weekend. Having been the father of brand new babies I knew that the digital count and a pronounced in-and-out motion of the chest was the main concern. When Sonny Jim came out, in an upscale University hospital, I believed the Doc when he brushed off the gargantuan dents in the skull as “temporary, and typical” when a baby is yanked out with forceps the size of Harley handlebars. “A fine little football player” was the first thing I heard. And when it registered, I remember thinking that it was an odd thing for the young female anesthetist to say in the ‘70s. But rather than rendering gender, she was thinking that his head looked like it already had a helmet on.

Now that was a trip. Though I have treated myself to a generous helping of the recreational pleasures of that long ago Learycal day, I could never quite describe the feeling that I did or didn’t experience when I saw that brand new life form tautly drawn from its mother. Holey Moley! eh Heth? It was almost like a death. It is so hard to fathom what you just saw with your own eyes and at the same time absorb the ineluctable consequences. For days it would come back to me in a flash (as they say) going about my normal routine. The fact that I owned a little baby startled me.

It wasn’t like when Jess was born and I was 23 and took it in stride as my due. We brought her home in a pink card board box from the hospital that had “Baby Case” written on it, even though she was the only kid born that week in North Cornflake. I suppose that’s better than “Jess-icka.”

But, when Sonny was born ten years later, I was in a totally different mind set. We had tried for a long time, and though I love “trying” we started to think maybe we had to seriously consider what we would do if no baby wanted us. After an anguishing year we got the thumbs up and so I had the rest of the nine months to worry myself foolish about the plausible what-ifs. Though never religious after I gave up the cloth (I was a Latin spouting alter boy till I was 16 – don’t even go there!), I started trying to brown-nose god by asking to be made strong if the toe-count was off, or any other limiting thing might happen that would make our baby less perfect than he actually turned out to be.

The delivery was a soulless hell for his mother on account of the extra hat size for all those brains and she had to stay in the lying-in till the stitches came out. I think I did most of the right things in a sincere effort to show that I understood and cared. But there is no freaking way any man can fathom what women go through. You can only try by imagining what it would feel like for you to pass a flaming porcupine.

Now the torch has been passed and I know that little O is in the best possible hands. In April he will move to Chicago. After pre-school he might think about becoming a community organizer. And perhaps he could go into teaching at some future date, say at the famous eponymous University out there. After that he might even just want to … I’m just sayin’, run for office.

Lighten up. It could happen.