Op-Ed Columns

Every day, two or three times or more, I clean spam off my computer. If I don’t recognize the name, it’s outta here. Delete! And I didn’t recognize “Overbluemoon.” But for some reason I clicked Open.

I’m glad I did.

“Overbluemoon” is a young lady from Philadelphia. She discovered me and my address while looking for baby names.

It seems a friend of hers was pregnant; they were checking the Internet for names that were unique. Overblue liked Southern names, so they Googled around and came across a column I had written on the topic. They wanted to enlist me in the search.

That was nearly two years ago. We have been corresponding, off and on, ever since — a cross-cultural exchange if ever there was one.

Overblue is Italian, Catholic, part of a large extended family that a Southern boy like me has to struggle to visualize — I keep seeing scenes from “The Godfather” or “The Sopranos.” I figured she was conjuring up “Sweet Home Alabama” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and hoped not “Deliverance.”

She works in an office across the river in New Jersey and occasionally tends bar on the weekend — which makes sense, for the “Overbluemoon” moniker refers to the Blue Moon tavern her family once lived over. Her husband is a fireman, and they have a daughter a year younger than my Anna.

We write about all sorts of things. Comparisons mostly. Expressions (she liked “he needed killing.”) Accents (the pronunciation of “eye-talian”). Y’all and youse guys. Food (cheese steak and barbeque). Beers. The Jersey Shore and the Redneck Riviera. Schools. Weather. Church. How holidays are celebrated (fish on Christmas Eve). Ethnic roots (you know you are Italian if your grandfather had a fig tree). Our jobs. Our spouses. Our kids. We write a lot about our kids.

Yankee e-mail buddies are great. Every Southerner should have one.
If I could, I’d assign each of my students a couple — especially in my Southern culture class. The best way to know what you are is to know what you aren’t. And you might even find out that what you aren’t is worth adding to what you are.

Know what I mean?

Anyway, about seven months ago, Overblue announces that she and the fireman were going to be parents again. And another name search began.

I immediately brought up my perennial favorite — Okra — which I have suggested to every woman I have ever known who was great with child, and which every woman great with child has rejected. Must be the hormones.

My cousin Benny, you remember Benny, selected Okra for his second daughter. The plan was to slip it onto the birth certificate when his wife was under the influence of all those drugs they give women, but at the last minute he decided to add Gumbo as a middle name. I think he could have gotten Okra by her, but when he told the nurse “Okra Gumbo,” the wife came out of her stupor and christened the child Leanna.

Okra didn’t make the short list in Philly, either.

So I took to calling the babe-a-waiting “Sweet Pea” while parents debated something more appropriate. (Somehow the priest saying, “Sweet Pea, I baptize you in the name of . . .” just didn’t compute.)

And while Mama and Daddy and daughter talked, I turned to the place all good Southerners turn for names — The Bible, God’s holy word, the Good Book.

Lot of fine names in there.

Mary, Martha, Sarah, Elizabeth, not to mention David, Noah, Aaron and Ethan.

How about Jessie, I thought? I always liked Jessie. My grandmother was named Jessie. And I wanted to name one of my children after her, but didn’t. I figured there was already a Jesse Jackson, and that was enough.

So I grabbed my copy of the Scripture and did a little research. If I was gonna suggest going with the Bible, I wanted to have some dandies ready for submission.

I made a list. There was Kohath, and Zurishaddai and Ochram. Ahira and Ammishaddai and Absalom. You don’t hear names like that anymore — for a reason.

(I had a friend in college named Ezekiel Hezekiah Bixler — called him Zeke. But that was a long time ago.)

You don’t hear names like that because one day the child will grow up and enter school.

And the teacher will call the roll.

“Kohath?”… “Present.”

“Zurishaddai?”… “Present.”

“Ahira?”… “Present”

“Ammishaddai?”… “Present”

I tore up the list.

And I stuck with “Sweet Pea.” And the other day she was born — as Jayne Emerson Garman.

She’s now safely at home with sister Julia. And the four of them — Mother and daughter and daughter and father — are doing fine.

And maybe, one day, I’ll actually get to meet her.

But between now and then and even after that, she will always be “Sweet Pea” to me.