The Naming of Things

Mark Twain in his Adam’s Diary, talks about how the names of things came to be.  Adam credits Eve, whom he somewhat resents for taking over his privacy and independence.

On Tuesday, the second day, Adam writes:  Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls-- why, I am sure I do not know. Says it LOOKS like Niagara Falls. That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no chance to name anything myself.

And then on Friday he says, The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty-- GARDEN OF EDEN.

I find Twain very amusing and this section of the Diaries, especially so.  

All this leads up to the naming of things, and especially characters in my writing.

In my recently re-issued novel Family Plot, I knew there would be fifteen children, so I named them alphabetically.  I thought this was humorous, but very few people commented on it.  Maybe it was too subtle.

I also collect names.  In Oliver, Oliver, a novel I am shopping  with publishers currently, I named the main character’s step-grandfather Darko Andric.  I picked that name up when we were in London with one of our grandsons - our present for his twelfth birthday.  

We were riding the top of a London bus, and as usual I had my notebook out. As I recall, I found Darko’s as the owner of a pub on Oxford Street.

I also find names at cemeteries.  In Family Plot, Dimple Deribus’ first name was on a tombstone in the old section of the graveyard where my in-laws are buried.  We also put our son’s ashes on top of his grandfather there.  I found the name Lovely, her mother in the novel, there also.

Deribus, their last name, was the name of my Ohio grandparents’ neighbor when I was a youth.  My Grandma Roxie, who sat on her front porch and perused the neighborhood, thought Mrs. Deribus was a scandal.  The poor old lady wore a house dress most of the day and would pull weeds from her garden in the front of her home.  When she bent over, my grandmother “could see all the way to London.”  

Mrs. Deribus got dressed up every evening and then someone would drive up and honk, and she’d rush out to the car.  “She’s going to play Bunko again,” my Grandma Roxie would comment.  I don’t exactly know what Bunko is, but I suspect it’s pretty innocuous.  My grandmother didn’t intend to be funny, but she frequently was.  And those summer evenings on the porch provided me with a great name.

Also in Family Plot is a farmer named Bob Burgwald.  This man is a member of our church, and I have permission to use his name - a signed release, in fact.  If someone wanted to use my name in a novel, as long as I wasn’t a terrible villain, I’d be flattered.

As far as names go, I have tried to ‘friend’ every Bill Moser on Facebook.  So far I have about twenty friends with my name or a variation.  We’re probably related.

Sunday, when we went to a Memorial Party for a dear friend who had died, we sat at the dinner next to a charming lady who has a lawyer cousin named Moser who lives in California.  Are we related?

I honestly don’t know, but it’s very possible.  My Moser grandparents were divorced in the 1920’s.  My grandfather died shortly before my birth and I never met my grandfather’s side of the family.

Which brings me to genealogy.  I open the very comprehensive book of genealogy that my father created, point my finger and choose a name.  One of my favorites is Longnecker, but I have to be careful which character gets that name because of possible connotations.  A character who sits on the front porch and comments on the neighbors might be a good choice.

Please feel free to comment on this post, and to let me know how you choose names for your characters if you write.

And if you’re interested in buying the recently re-issued Family Plot, it’s available at BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com.

Retirement Lessons

When I retired from teaching, I knew that if I didn’t plan something productive, I’d turn not into a couch potato, but into the couch. I chose not to teach again, and I vowed never to grade another paper. I had taken adult ed classes in writing the short story at the University of Chicago (the most expensive adult ed around somehow), and Yvonne, my instructor, had earned an MFA (Master of Fine Arts, not M-F-ing Articulate as my son and daughter seem to think) in Creative Writing from Vermont College.

An MFA in Creative Writing was the way to go, I thought. I explored a number of possibilities. Most programs required class attendance (imagine that!) and a two-year residence, to say nothing of the GRE. I didn’t want to move, even temporarily. I borrowed the GRE Prep book from the library and was immediately flummoxed by the math. Cardinal and Ordinal numbers. Hmmmmmm. I was retired, and had never needed to know the difference. I explored further. I found at that time three low-residency programs in the United States. I took a Personal Leave/ College Visit day from teaching to check out colleges in Vermont. I went partly as a model to my students, but mostly because I wanted to know what I was getting into.

Goddard College welcomed me. I applied, and they accepted me. Two years later I had my MFA in hand and a novel manuscript mostly completed on my computer. Since then I have written two more novels, started a fourth, and traveled a lot.

Every week day that I am at home I go to my office and write. I try to be there between nine and noon, but now we have two gorgeous dogs, Stella and Brando. I take them to the dog park and don’t get back until later. So I work most days from 9:30 till after 12. I still get my time in. Some days I revise. Some days I write and revise. I aim for 500 words a day and usually do better.

All that is well and good, probably too self-referential, but possibly an object lesson for those who plan to retire. Potential retirees must plan beyond the day of retirement for the life they hope to lead. That includes financial planning, but isn’t merely that. My in-laws did great financial planning, lived well below their means, and moved back to the little town they grew up in to be close to family. My mother-in-law was one of fifteen and she missed her siblings. They shrank in that little Southern Illinois town. By the time they died 25 years later, they had lots of family (too much family?) but no friends. My father-in-law read every book of interest to him in the local library – and some that weren’t too interesting. They expected everyone to have the flexibility they had and were surprised we couldn’t drop everything to visit them at their whim. A trip to Wal-Mart was a gigantic and exciting adventure – and about the biggest adventure they allowed themselves. I feel sad for them because they didn’t continue to grow.

When they retire, some people play golf. I don’t and can’t imagine the time and expense it takes. But most people don’t write, either. Lots of people move to retirement communities. We chose to stay where we are because our grandsons live nearby – it was hard for us to get grandchildren. We have friends close, and the thought of finding a new doctor, new dentist, new insurance agent, new friends, was daunting. A symptom, no doubt, of our insularity, our own shrinking.

A colleague who retired from teaching when I did substitute taught frequently her first year out, then went back to the school she retired from and started a computer math tutoring program. Each day, she says, it gets harder. Her husband, who is also retired, goes to the gym each morning for about an hour and then, I suspect, negates his workout during the rest of the day. They are active socially, make friends easily and meet them often for coffee or shopping or a walk. They go to movies and out for dinner. And it seems to me the only reason she continues to work is that she can’t think of much else to do and she doesn’t want to spend the day in the house with her husband. She married him for better or for worse, but not, as the saying goes, for lunch.

On the other hand, a friend who retired several years before I did is leading an exciting and glamorous life. Her partner travels all over the world on business. My friend goes along for the ride, meets new and interesting people, continues to grow, and is one of my all-time role models. She had plans for her life when she retired. The plans didn’t work out exactly the way she expected, but most plans don’t.

And whether our plans work out or not is immaterial. The point is to have a plan, to set a goal. Life, according to the trite adage, is not about the destination but the journey. We all meet the same fate, although not in the same way. But the trip we take getting there is what’s important. We can travel with grace and interest, or we can shut ourselves up in little boxes, never to emerge.