The Name Game

Despite TPR being maddeningly elusive, the imminent adoption of the little ones has been on my mind since the meeting with the school two weeks ago. The county case worker indicated no rush to address adoption with Chica Marie during that visit, even after I expressed my desire for the discussion to begin sooner rather than later. I’ve been reticent to start the discussion mostly because things always feel so nebulous to me, but also because I view this as being the case workers ball to start rolling. After all, they are the professionals who have been taught the best way to say these types of things to a child. And, if my experience with Primero counts for anything, this is how it should be done. Still, no one but me has bothered to float the idea of adoption past Chica Marie. No one has bothered to check in with her, see how she views this whole thing or try to explain how it works in child-like terms. Just me. And I have said so little to her. I guess I’ve been waiting for the “right” time and viewed TPR as that measuring stick. But, as TPR continues to change and the goal of adoption remains the same, I’ve gotten brazen and have begun talking with Chica Marie about adoption. Luckily for us, she has seen adoption through Primero so she has seen that nothing, as far as the day-to-day life stuff, changes. Still, adoption to her is not something she can understand.

 

From past experience (when we had a fateful discussion about her mommy not being her legal mommy anymore, which she took to mean dead and could not stop crying about it), I decided to talk about names, rather than adoption itself. So, I explained first how Primero changed his last names, taking his second last name from his bio mom and adding my last name. Chica Marie promptly told me she hated my last name. Undeterred, I explained how Love Bug was going to keep his first name and change his middle and last names. She got more agitated, vehemently declaring she HATED my last name. Resolute, I forged on and asked her about changing her name or keeping her name how it is now, just using my last name instead. She had a fit, screaming she hated my stupid last name and didn’t want that name. She wanted to be called by the nickname her sister gave her, Butt-butt. Er, no. That is not happening. Abandoning the last name debate, I asked her about her first name. I suggested it is hard for people to know how to pronounce her name and thought perhaps we could switch her first name and her middle name or spell her first name differently or get a whole new name altogether. She opted for a brand new name, forgetting about her anger over my last name. Nothing I suggested appealed to her and other than the offensive nickname, she had no suggestions. Our conversation came to a halt when I realized the time and instructed her to prepare for a bath. This conversation was last week and we have not yet resumed negotiations. Primero, frustrated with Chica Marie’s indecisiveness, told me to just pick a name and forget about getting her consent. I would rather it not come to that.

 

There are a lot of schools of thought when it comes to changing the name of an adopted child, just as there are a lot of considerations. I wish it were as easy as it is for people having biological children, just pick a name and go, but it’s not. I have mourned many times the loss of naming my own children. I won’t get to use the names I had so lovingly picked out when I first started this journey. If we had been able to conceive naturally, and had a girl I wanted to name her Alice Adelia after our grandmothers. A boy would have been named Emerson Antonio (the middle name Flaco’s middle name and keeping with a tradition my parents started in giving the son the same middle name of the father – Love Bug is getting my father’s middle name). I won’t have an Allura Brielle or a Branson Nathaniel. No Henry David, no Molly Marie. It makes me sad, but I’ve given up dreaming of ‘what could have been’ and force myself to stay in the ‘what is’ camp.

 

I am not a fan of Chica Marie’s name and I really have an aversion to names using apostrophes, yet if she expressed a desire to keep her name as is, I would honor that. Unfortunately, Chica Marie is hard to pin down and while she pitched a fit over losing a last name she doesn’t even know (she can spell her first name but does not know her last name), she expressed no attachment to her first or middle name. After some more consideration, I have come to the conclusion that I am going to give her three options. Option number one is to keep her first and middle name as they are and add my last name. Option two is a slight deviation from her first name, keeping the first syllable but changing the ending and keeping her current middle name. The third and final option is another deviation from her original name, keeping the first syllable but changing the last and adding a new middle name. Even though she didn’t seem concerned about it, I thought it would be best to keep her first name with the same letter so we can keep using her nickname and not have one huge change all at once.

 

To my surprise, when I showed Primero the choices I had made his first question was, “what does she have from her mom?” Taken aback, I said in the first option, she retains her first and middle name that her mom gave her, in the second option she keeps her first name, it is only the third option that is a total change. I asked if his suggestion was I give both the children their mother’s last name as a middle name and he said no. Our conversation ended before I could ask him if he thought the name change felt like I was trying to cut ties from her mother because that is not my intent. And, if that is how it is perceived, then I’m not changing her name, just the spelling (I just find that apostrophe insufferable!). I guess I just need to sit with this more and wait for Chica Marie to find her voice on the matter.