There are many joys of being a grandparent: watching your own child and their partner growing as parents, experiencing all of the excitement without all of the responsibility, and loving the new family with your whole being. But what really melts my heart is when she calls me by name, “NayNay.”
Yes, I picked out my grandma name when Hazel was yet to be born, as seems to be the norm. I wanted a name that reflected my given name, Renée, and was easy for a young child to say. I was fully receptive to being called something close to NayNay, and would accept that moniker. But she called me NayNay very early on, right after Dada and Mama. Yes, there may have been some coaching involved. And yes, it still melts my heart when she says my name excitedly when I come into her house or her room, or when she wants me to pick her up for a hug, or when I answer a FaceTime call, or when she is pointing to photographs of me.
She knows my name.
There is power in naming people. It confers personhood and recognition of the individual.
One of the responsibilities of Adam and Eve in the garden was to name all of the animals. This myth illustrates the power of naming. Humanity organizes the world by categorizing and putting labels on the creatures and their surroundings. Because this act cannot be reciprocal, as far as our understanding of animal communication is currently understood, it also creates a hierarchy. Because I can name and label and categorize you, and you cannot do the same to me, I have power over you.
So part of the charm of Hazel calling me by my name is that she is creating a world where she can name people and objects and gain a growing measure of control over her environment. She is learning to separate herself and others from the whole. And though the hierarchy of parent or grandparent to child will hold for several more years, naming lays the foundation of reciprocity between us.
When we see others as persons with names, it’s harder to deny their humanity.
But before she could say my name, Hazel knew who I was—someone who loved and cared for her. I could see the light of recognition in her face when she reached out for me.
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One of Harvey’s last intelligible words was my name. After he lost that ability, he still knew who I was, though probably not what our specific relationship was. But he knew me as “his person.” His whole being would light up when he saw me and reached out for me.
Eventually, Harvey lost all of the light behind his eyes and the knowledge of his surroundings, even his own sense of self. He may have been deeply, deeply forgetful at this point, but I wasn’t. I knew his name and what he meant to me, his family, his patients, and his friends. There may not have been any equality of intellect at that point, but I was still connecting to his soul through the shared memories that I continue to hold.
And we are sharing those memories with Hazel as we teach her about “Grandpa Harvey.”