Random Ruminations

Whenever I spend time with my siblings I fall into the error of calling my sons by my brothers' names. I do this consistently, mind you, with the oldest of my sons being dubbed with the name of the oldest of my brothers, and the second son with the second brother's name, and so on. So Joel is Myron and Shane is Caleb and Grant is Lowell. I sometimes call my brothers by my sons' names too. I usually keep the birth order straight then as well.

Some of my siblings fall into the same pattern--except for Ronald, who does not do this. He thinks it's a habit that primarily afflicts the oldest members of large families. They have a lot of years to develop the pattern of relating to family members younger than themselves, and the patterns come to life again with only slight provocation.

My dad did this too. At least once that I remember he called his sons to get up in the morning by his younger brothers' names: "Mahlon, Daniel, Paul." He ran out of sons (at least those who needed to get up to help with chores) before he could get to "Fred."

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Having recently been with my siblings reminded me of some of the family nicknames we used to use. Lowell used to call Ronald Bonebags because he was very slight, with no layers of padding. Lois was Louie, due to an unfortunate misspelling by a penpal who wrote on an envelope this clever rhyme:

Mailman, mailman, run like a fox.
Send this letter to Louis Jean's box.

My middle name morphed into the moniker "Ellaphant," and Carol's name changed into Carrie. Dorcas did not like Dorc and Linda did not like Malinda, and I don't think Clara like Clarey. Myron sometimes was called Myronical, and Lowell "Lobo" (wolf) after some in our family heard Spanish-speaking people trying to pronounce his name. Marcus and Anthony were called Marc and Tony later in life, but not much in our family. Ronald is often shortened to "Ron" nowadays, and Bonebags no longer seems appropriate. Caleb was occasionally called Caley. Many of these names seem pretty silly, and I hope having written them here does not give anyone the urge to try them out.

Sometimes family nicknames become commonly used by others outside the family. I'm glad most of ours escaped this fate.

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My cousin Edith is expecting twin grandbabies. She herself never had twins, but her mother and grandmother both did, and now her only daughter will as well. So out of four generations of women in a direct line of descent, three have had (or are having) twins. Edith is the only daughter in her family. Perhaps if there had been more women in this generation, one of them might have maintained the pattern.

Edith is my double first cousin. The fact that my mother never had twins, despite ten pregnancies, and her sister-in-law (Edith's mother) did--with seven pregnancies--may be another evidence that if there is an inherited tendency to give birth to twins, it occurs most often in the maternal inheritance lines. I can think of exceptions, of course, as I'm sure you can, but I suspect there might be a statistical observable pattern if we had access to the appropriate data.

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At our Tribe of Levi reunion, someone took a picture of all the twins in the family: My uncles, Harry and Perry, my cousin Evan, whose twin Ellis was missing, my niece and nephew Brady and Luisa, and my cousins' children Robert and Rachel (Leanna) and Jared and Jacob (Leonard).

Aunt Mary told me something I didn't know about fraternal/identical twins. Her twins shared a placenta, but arrived in separate amniotic sacs. Identical twins usually share one amniotic sac. Now it's known that babies are identical twins if there is a shared placenta, but there was some confusion when Evan and Ellis were born. Edith's expected grandbabies are like Evan and Ellis were. The stage when a fertilized egg divides determines whether there is one amniotic sac or two when there are identical twins.

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We chuckle sometimes about the older custom of giving twins names that are very similar. My uncles are a case in point. As we pronounce their names, Harry and Perry sound exactly alike except for the first consonant. But when you hear Pennsylvania people say their names, they sound like this: Hah-ree and Pur-ree--not very much alike--certainly not enough alike to have given them to identical twins 85 years ago. I don't know if this is a Midwestern joke or a Lancaster County joke, but I think it's funny.

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By September of this year, nine of the 12 members of my dad's parental family will be at least 80 years old.

Their father died at 84 and their mother at 58, from cancer.

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I have never been tempted to wear jewelry. This morning I thought of a very good foundational reason for my not wearing jewelry--in addition to the ones I've heard all my life: None of the body parts which jewelry usually clings to or dangles from are places I especially want to draw attention to. My ring finger on the left hand is crooked, due to having torn a tendon there. For good measure, the tendon ripped off a corner of the bone it was attached to when it gave way. I don't work hard to hide that finger, but I surely don't need a ring there to draw attention to the malformation.

My ears have wrinkles in the lobes. I think jewelry there would be ludicrous. My neck has skin tags. And, no thank you, I do not wish to have them closely scrutinized by people whose attention might be drawn there by a necklace. And a nose stud? Please. The nose has to be there, but it doesn't have to be highlighted. It's highlighted quite enough as it is.

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This afternoon I'm going to help clean the building that the Crisis Pregnancy Center plans to move into. I hire someone to do my cleaning, so this is ironic. Obviously I hire someone, not because I don't know how to clean, but because of all that I'm expected to do, I like that the least, and find it the most logical to hire out.

I think I feel about cleaning like Harry S.'s dad does about sheet rock work: Never for money; only for love. He said this after his health had been ruined from inhaling too much sheet rock dust, so he quit doing it as a job, but he still sometimes did it as a service to someone he loved--a family member, for example.

For me, cleaning at the Crisis Pregnancy Center building is my one small bit to affirm those who choose life for their unborn children as well as to support those who offer more direct support to such mothers. Tied to such a noble purpose, I can grit my teeth and tackle a cleaning job. I can do it for my family too, if need be. But I'm glad I have the option to pay Marian to do it instead.