Legacy

What's in a name?  Sares is exploring that very question in her blog, LoveLeigh Treasures and others.  She is hosting a most interesting "blog party today.  Stop by, the story of her nickname is charming and I can relate as I have a nickname only my grandfather calls me, but I choose not to discuss it today because I could never, ever figure out how it is spelled . . . it is heavy with Polish sounds and entanglements . . . bit I do love it so. 

What's in a name?  I have long hoped that spirit and power can be in a name.  That is what inspired us to name our daughter, Sarah Caroline.

Sarah is a common enough name and that commonness, itself, may have put us off that name normally.  But we knew from the start that our daughter would need the power and the spirit of her new family and we tried to vest that within her by giving her this name.

Sarah was the name of my great-grandmother, a saint of a woman, feminine as the most delicate lace, but strong as a mule.  She came here, on her own, from Poland, as a teenage girl, not knowing a soul in this new world.  She set about making a life for herself . . . and she did . . . and she also created the most beautiful woman I have ever known, my grandmother who, in turn, created my mother.  How could I not link my daughter to my great grandmother's incredible legacy?

Caroline was my husband's mother, the happiest soul I was ever lucky enough to know.  I only knew her for a short time, for she died rather abruptly before my husband and I were married.  I grieved as if she were my own mother because she had been such a spiritual mother to me.  I miss her laughing spirit each and every day, but am grateful for the time I did know her and especially for the man she raised, the man who is now my husband and the best father I could have ever dreamed of for my children.  We made "Caroline" my daughter's middle name for we wanted to link my daughter with her grandmother forevermore despite Sarah never having spoken with her.

So my daughter carries with her the name of her brave, immigrant great-great grandmother who came to this country from her eastern European country in search of a better life.  Despite being separated by several generations, they share that bond.  My daughter, too, came here from an eastern European country when we adopted her and brought her home to be part of our family.  She, too, comes to the new world in search of a better life.

And we paired her first name with a middle name of a woman whom she should have met, had fate not been quite so cruel.  With this middle name, our daughter will be ever mindful of the wonderful woman who would have been her "grandma." 

My daughter is six years old now, but oh so old and oh so young for the time she spent as an orphan.  I pray that she has the power and the spirit to continue in the legacy of strength and love for which she has been named.