Nicholas

When I last talked to my youngest son on the telephone we decided that it's been eighteen years since he first brought his friend Sei home with him. They were college freshmen and it was Thanksgiving week-end. I remember it well. It was a special time. My eldest son also brought a new friend home, and she later became our first daughter-in-law. My strongest initial impressions of Sei: every game we played, no matter what type, he won it. Also, he made fun of Emily Dickinson a little bit, but I forgave him for that. The time has flown by and now Sei has become the patriarch of his own family. Probably when Christine, Sei's wife, and her relatives gaze at the new baby they see resemblances and characteristics from their family. But because of the eighteen years, when I see pictures of Nicholas I see a tiny replica of Sei. And how adorable is that? When I first heard what his name was to be, it made me happy. Our first born son is named Nicholas too. It seems like a little connection to this new life. And then there is the matter of good taste. I wonder if Christine and Sei had as much trouble coming up with a name they both liked as my husband and I did. I had no idea when I agreed to marry the man that he had such different ideas about what makes a good name. For this wonderful child that I was carrying, I needed a grand name. Everything he suggested sounded so ordinary and old-fashioned to me. (I think old-fashioned names are very popular right now.) Every name I suggested sounded overly dramatic and pretentious to him. And then one day, when time was growing short, he came home from work and asked, "How about 'Nicholas'?" I loved it the minute I heard it, and 'Nick' too. A line in his baby book asked what color was my baby's hair? "Golden", I wrote. " Who is the baby named for?" "The last Czar of Russia," I said. Pretentious? My Nicholas cried a lot between 4:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. I hope that the new Nicholas doesn't do that. I'm working on a little pillow to commerate his birth. I'll try to hurry so it's done before he grows up. They do that so quickly.