Xanthe

                                                              

    An ABC Wednesday Post: The Letter X

(Xanthe, daughter of Oceanus, by Barbara Cooney.)

Last year I received a birth announcement from a friend's daughter announcing the arrival of her new baby girl; Xanthe Alexandria. The correct pronunciation of this is Zanthee, which I only discovered after a conversation with my friend.

In Greek mythology, Xanthe was a sea nymph, one of the Oceanids, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. In ancient Greek, Xanthe means 'golden one', which has also been interpreted as blonde-haired. More likely than not, little Xanthe will be the only child in her class with a name beginning with X. So too, by the time she starts school, she will probably be used to telling people how her name is pronounced.

The Romans had an expression nomen est omen, or "name is destiny." A name is part of a person's legacy. It will be recorded in history. You will say it thousands of times during the course of your life.  It will be written on class lists, read out loud amongst throngs of others at graduation, spoken with portent on your wedding day, printed on business cards. Above all, rightly or wrongly, a name often conveys an image, an assumption about the person. It creates an impression.

Psychology professor, Albert Mehrabian, tested a host of names to see how people viewed them. Some names immediately aroused images of beauty or intelligence, others of popularity or kindness. Yet others were seen as artistic, nerdy or odd. On the whole, people judged to have more traditional names such as Rachel and Robert did extremely well. More alternative names scored badly. Breeze, for example, was viewed as being a poor student and business risk. Mehrabian feels that parents who choose or create bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just plain foolish.

                                                    (from Google Images.)

Some celebrity offspring names are perfect illustrations of this case in point:  Moxie Crimefighter, daughter of Penn Jillette and Emily Jillette, and Spec Wildhorse, son of John Cougar Mellencamp and Elaine Irwin, are but just two of a whole litany of bizarre names created by celebrities. The newest to add to the weird and wacky list are Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, whose newborn daughter faces the world with the moniker, North West. Poor wee soul ... it's all south from there.

Alaska's Sarah Palin, that Western avatar of traditional values, rather paradoxically named her children, Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. Perhaps there is a hidden part of her which yearns to be more artistic, less conservative, that is solely reflected in the names she chose for her children.

For many parents, picking out a baby name is like choosing the perfect nursery décor or baby accessories. It comes with a great deal of thought, reflection and personal taste. Some choose to name after beloved family members, sports legends, or heroic figures. (I named my oldest son, Nicholas, after my much loved maternal grandfather.) Others pick names which are trendy, popular, current. Some go the biblical route, or take a page from their favourite novel, movie or historical era. Yet others give nod to family tradition or their ethnic roots.

My four grandchildren have fairly unusual names. It is my personal policy to never get involved in any way in the naming of grandchildren. I had my turn. Now it is my children's right, and their joy to choose names. The agreement between my second son and the mother of their children was that he would choose the boys' names and she would pick the girls' names. They have two sons. My son picked both their names from the NHL (National Hockey League) roster. (Seriously!) Regardless of my own private personal opinion, my response to the announcement of each grandchild's name has always been the same, "That's lovely! I really like it. You've chosen something unique and strong/beautiful." And so it is, as I have grown to love each child's name as part of them.

I think that names perhaps have a greater significant influence when that is the only thing you know about a person. In time, people give personality and definition to their own names, good and bad. As Shakespeare said in Romeo and Juliet:

What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Xanthe's relative obscurity (not ranked in the top 1000 names), will take a bit of determination to make it work.  She will stand out in a crowd of little girls named Emma (top girl's name in Canada for the last five years in a row), and among those bestowed with the tendency towards ever-more tortured, innovative spellings such as Mackenzie (McKynzee), Ava (Aayvah) and Taylor (Taelyr), all of which I have personally seen. In time, though, I have a feeling little Xanthe will come to define her name as a distinctive, interesting, spirited appellation.

                                     (Small Possibilities, by Maggie Taylor.)

The Culture of Play

(My children playing Ninja Turtles with a group of neighbourhood friends one summer afternoon. Nicholas, aged 9, is the boy in the middle wearing the aqua-green shirt. Son, Joshua, aged 5, stands next to him in the yellow shorts. Daughter, Sarah-Beth, 3 years old, is the little girl in the red dress. They had made their own masks, shields and swords.)

This past spring break, I found myself immersed and fascinated by my grandchildren’s play. One afternoon, the two youngest, gap-toothed eight and nine years olds, sat side by side with hand held video games. "They’re interactive", my son said.

In what language do they construct their inner worlds, their utopian places and sites of belonging, I wondered?

My mother had a rag doll. Literally. It was made of pieces of material from her mother’s rag bag. It had button eyes, woolen hair and a sewn on smile. She rocked it, sang lullabies to it, loved it with all the fervour of her burgeoning mother-heart. My sister, Amanda, eschewed all girly toys and played with meccano and lego, constructing the elaborate houses and castles of her dreams. My daughter, Sarah-Beth, composed with the magnetic coloured letters of a plastic alphabet. I can still her now, on her knees before the fridge, creating a litany of words. She also rarely went anywhere without at least one of her garish plastic 'My Little Ponies'. She was forever combing their tangled manes and arranging them in colourful rows and formations. My sons lived in an alternate universe of Transformers and leaping Ninja Turtles.

Something stirs in me from the well of my own childhood play. Besides my own well-loved baby dolls and my adored paper cut-out dolls, I remember the magic of marbles; crystals, peewees, King cobs, steelies. A many coloured collection of treasures kept in a drawstring bag, it might have been unearthed from some pirate’s cache. Mostly we girls just watched the boys play, but I had my own little stash, thrilling to the feel and look of the round weights in my palm.

I knew the rhythmic geometry of the yoyo, spinning globes with string inviting me to "walk the dog, rock the cradle, go around the world". I also recall with enjoyment  the all girls' games of Jacks and hopscotch, and the large group games of 'Mother, Mother May I?' and 'Red Rover, Red Rover".

The virtual world of today’s games seems to make the earth miniscule and children giants. Yet, they are able to draw new boundaries, make reality oscillate in a new dimension.

Toys and children’s joy; inimitable, personal.

As a little girl, I knew the poetry of the jump rope. The rope coming round would invite me to risk a jump into the split second of – NOW. Here is the truth of playing. Enter the narrow gate of now, for there is no other time.

Need we ever go far beyond the poetry of children playing?

Door as Diary

Magpie

                                      

                                                         DOOR AS DIARY

A door as diary

Locking out the world

Inviting longings loose

Upon its panels.

A door as place

Where keyhole dreams

In patterns amplifying

What eyes can’t see.

A door as barter

Beckoning to open

The woman who

Writes her words.

Morning Witness

I am given a moment every morning that lights me from head to foot, charges my batteries, and makes my senses dance. What did I ever do to deserve this?

Most days I awaken around 6:30 and amble to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. The world outside my windows is still in darkness, the features nebulous, bosky and undifferentiated to the early morning eye. A gentle silence reigns. The stillness which is draped over everything is the perfect companion to begin the day.

I usually sip my first coffee standing by the window. As the sun rises over the horizon, the day's first light peers through the trees, pokes its way through the iron railings on the patio and paints the walls with rosy fingers and a wide brush. A delicious warmth creeps over my body. It is a mixture of the fragrant, the visual, and the embraced.

I find often the most beautiful stories are written in darkness, exposed by the sun, augmented by shadows, then gone. Each sunrise is different, and every single one is a gift. Ready or not, here comes another day. Here I come too, perhaps not as filled with light as the morning sky, but working on it in my own peculiar fashion.

I wonder how our ancient kin would have described such luminosity? There may have been a paucity of descriptive terms and expressions for such experiences in the long ago, but we are united across time and space in the unspoken language of wonder. In my mind, I can see them standing somewhere quietly on a summer morning long ago, as entranced and comforted by the deep glow, as I am here today.

Raspberry Songs

                                                   RASPBERRY SONGS - Magpie Tales

I sip raspberry wine

Exhale rose-tinted songs

 Eliminate words

Add new endings

Pause notes

Fill in the glistening

Heady spaces

With juicy self singing

Winged raspberry tongue.

 

Let Me Call You 'Weetheart

I find I can often be wrenched by love. I can pick up a stone from the beach and feel myself wholly in love with the tallow striations in a bit of agate, the blood in a polished shard of jasper. I can love the purple-blue ripeness of blueberries. I can love the thick slices of a red ripe tomato. I can love the silence of my house in the stillness of the very early morning. I can love the hands of my husband tearing fresh herbs to scent dinner.

There is a little mental exercise I have done since childhood. I make a list of the people in my life, my loved ones, and mentally tick off their whereabouts. I place them safely, one by one, where my brain knows or imagines them to be. All are safe within the bell jar of my mind.

When my daughter, Sarah-Beth, was eighteen months old, I went into her room one morning. There she lay, grinning at me through the bars of her crib. "Hi 'weetheart!", she said distinctly and unexpectedly. It was an echo of my own usual morning greeting, spoken before I had a chance to form the words. My body still retains the exact memory and impact of that ‘weetheart. A moment of gut-wrenching love that can never lessen or diffuse in time. It’s a powerful thing, a pouring, a zap of love; uncontained, spilling forth in wild, sweet jabs.

Today my Sarah-Beth is twenty-seven years old. We shared our after dinner coffee this evening, on the phone. The curves and arabesques of our beating hearts fed each others’ hunger, my 'weetheart and I.

Magpie Tales: The Lost Skaters' Sonnet

The Lost Skater's Sonnet

There is none more elusive than pale hued
January. Lost skaters' kin. None more
Beautiful. The wool and fur do sustain
Their silver wings over ice-blue domain.
These winter flights are such rare surprises
Of maiden joy, we feel them speak again.
They do not know they are graced to fashion
Voices from sepia and blood, to sing
That thin place in air, muted lyric’s length.
Half ghost, ephemeral spell we recall
Past music of such ethereal strength.
Our later time on earth does lend enthrall
To magic echoes, poised reliquary
Trio of recollected January.


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The Spirit of Christmas

Every Christmas season my preparations begin with a reading of Charles Dickens 'A Christmas Carol'. There is something about Dickens which makes me yearn to curl up by a fire. I want the scent of game pies and thick meaty stews, mulled wine and tangerine oranges. I want to sip egg nog and break off bits of rich, buttery fruit cake with my fingers and pop them into my mouth as I read.

A Christmas Carol is a moral lesson in miracles. It teems and seethes with life. Sadness, fear, danger, loneliness, sacrifice, perhaps none of these are impossible to cope with, but bleak hopelessness, and the cynicism that comes with believing in nothing, are soul destroying.

Dickens hated sham and humbug. False feelings and false friends are endlessly exposed in myriad ways in his work. It's difficult sometimes, with all the rampant consumerism raging around us, to push the trivial aside, and connect with something deeper. The truth of my own intrinsic vitality and vulnerability cry out for hope, for communion, for miracles. 'A Christmas Carol' enfolds me in a mystery and compassion which stretches far beyond my own heart.

Christmas, of all celebrations, is a time for real feelings, real friends, real food, and real memories. It is a time to celebrate the birth of Christ, a time for charity and compassion, a time of giving and receiving, a time of love. Scrooge discovered it through the agency of a benevolent spirit. For me, its joy and good will are heralded by the company of a good book.

Emily and Me

Through an aisle of waving grasses and woodland wildflowers, I approach the high bench where I plan to sit quietly for an hour or so, gathering scattered pieces of myself. Resting at the crest of a hill I sit overlooking Mt. Peter and Mt. Paul, twin mountains guarding the Thompson River which floats like a curled blue ribbon on the earth.

 I carry with me only a pen, a journal, a bottle of water, and the buzz in my head. I sit with my back against the bench and my face to the east, where the yellowing grasses are hazy in the afternoon sun. I draw in a deep breath. Not for the first time, I think of how fortunate I am to live only a short five minute hike from this stunning vista.

Although I can’t let go of language entirely, I do manage to sit for a long spell in a wakeful hush. I keep my eyes open because I wish to see the stillness, not escape from it. The panorama I see is hardly wilderness, and yet every blade of grass, every bird and twig courses with a wild energy. The same energy pours through me. Although my body grows calm from sitting still, I rock slightly with the slow pulse of my heart. My breath and the clouds ride the same wind.

I think of the way humpback whales breach the sea with a snort from their blowholes and a wave of their flukes, and I remember how the water erased all signs of their passage moments after they dove again. Is that how it is for us? Do we slip crying breath into this world only to disappear, all traces lost when our time is done?

Physically gone, yes. But what about the soul? The heart? The essence of the beloved. Memories float in and out of consciousness; now gentle, now raging, now yearning. Images of an old wooden boat which has slipped away from its moorings and come to rest against a green and purple shore ... of a water lily climbing serenely toward the surface of a pond ... of a fallen leaf turning round and round on the river ... of a rippling wave dancing its way into existence and spreading out in slow circles until it kisses the shore.

There is no absolute stillness in death. Even the dead yield their substance in the stories of who they were, in the love bestowed, in the bone-memories of those they touch.


My thoughts drift to my recent visit to Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria where I knelt in the grass next to Emily Carr's grave. A much loved Canadian artist and one of my favourites, my visit was a pilgrimage of sorts. The impact of her work is still plain to see today as her gravesite is scattered with sketch pencils and paintbrushes left by adoring lovers of both her paintings and her prose. Nearby rises a stone marked with these words of Emily's, written almost a century ago:

“Dear Mother Earth, I have always specifically belonged to you. I have loved from babyhood to roll upon you, to lie with my face pressed right down onto you in my sorrows. I love the look of you and the smell of you and the feel of you. When I die, I should like to be in you, uncoffined, unshrouded, the petals of flowers against my flesh and you covering me up.”
Me too, Emily. Me too.

Magpie: Greening

Greening

The empty spaces

Wear a green

Mist as thin as a

Hummingbird’s wings.

I stoop in verdant garb

Shaped for bones

Far more elegant

Than mine,

Placing pieces

Of greening shapes

Imperfectly.

Still, poetry doesn’t

Make substance

Of devotion

Without a flaw

In the dance.

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