What's In A Name?

Before I start, I'm going to just preface this with a warning; It might get heavy.. I apologize.

Since I was a little girl, I have dreamed of having a family. My family had a lot of faults, and I always dreamed of the time that I could do it better. Differently. Do the things with my family that I wish I had growing up.

Most of the time, I am terrified at the thought of having a kid. On one hand, I'm like ahh, so cute. On another I'm like, diapers, spit up, no time, no sleep, loud noises... The actual birthing process... yikes. Shaking in my boots over here.

But, when I'm not freaking myself out about all that, and I allow myself the luxury of dreaming about it, I picture talking to my little 5 year old little girl. The way she looks always changes... sometimes she has my brown hair, Bryan's green eyes... Sometimes she has Bryan's black hair with my brown eyes and nose... it's always different.

I picture myself sitting with her and brushing her hair back and telling her about her name. My middle name. Lauriana. Showing her the pictures of the wall in the cemetery where her great-great-great-great grandmother is laid to rest. Where her name is painted onto a wall that crumbles more with every year. I'm showing her the pictures of when I was nine years old, standing by the wall, and when I took her daddy to go see it. How I anticipated her, talked with her Dad constantly about having a little girl and giving her a name that I love, that I'm proud of.

It's weird how a name can mean so much. I've spoken before about my Dad. About how I associate my life with a marker of his alcoholism. That the destruction of my family fell on my shoulders since I was the last one at home. It was awful. I have always felt... No... I feel that I was a last ditch effort to safe a marriage and only succeeded in making the pressure of life worse. Another mouth to feed? FOUR GIRLS?? Lots of emotional juice flowing for my Dad to use as a crutch for his alcoholism.

I never knew my Mom and Dad as a happy couple. I have few memories of the good times. But I always, always had my name. I had a special name. My sisters were Alison Marie, Kari Anne - perfectly good, solid names. But my middle name had flair. Megan Lauriana. It was a family name. My Mom told me that she wanted to have that as my first name, but thinking of a little kindergartner trying to spelling a first name with eight letters and a last name with eight letters made her think it was too much. I was sad when she told me that. Lauriana is just a beautiful name. Comparing Megan to Lauriana is like apples and oranges. Like an In-N-Out Burger to McDonalds. Ugh.

I swore, when I have a little girl, I would name her Lauriana. I would pass my name on... and hope that she loved it as much as I did, and maybe used it as a middle name for her daughter... or even a first name. Even if she doesn't, no problem. I just hope she loves it. And that she doesn't shorten it to Lauri. Eeek. :)

I mentioned in the last post that I went to the Azores. We went to two islands, Terceira and San Jorge. My maternal grandmother is from San Jorge and so is her mother, Mable and so is Mabel's mother - Lauriana. I took Bryan to the little cemetery where my middle name and our future daughters name is on the wall. A poor woman's grave marker.

Just this moment, taking Bryan to see something that means so much to me, that I dream of showing my future little chick, was worth the fact that I spent 95% of the trip sick as a dog from catching a cold on the plane.

Lucky me.