Pearls

This evening before bed I read my children a little book I made called Roots and Branches. There aren't a lot of words in it but that's okay because I can tell the stories to them...for now (though I suppose I should make a book with more words in it eventually). Instead there are pictures of ancestors (along with brief statistics: birth, death, and marriage dates).

We were flipping through and looking at the pictures and I was telling stories while the kids asked questions and made comments. Benjamin felt the need to cast judgement on every single name in the book and when we got to my grandma he wrinkled up his nose.

"Pearl?" he said. "Don't like that."

"Why, thank you," I said.

"Why are you thanking me?" he asked. "It's an ugly name."

"It's my middle name," I informed him. "I am named after my grandma."

"Oh," he stammered. "Well, it's alright for a middle name, I guess. But to go by that name every day? Just...why?!"

"Technically Pearl was her middle name, too," I said.

"What?!" he asked.

"Yes, look," I said, pointing to the text box containing the barest bones of her life details. "Her name was Zetta."

"Zetta?!" he echoed, completely dumbfounded.

"Zetta Pearl," I affirmed. "But she went by Pearl."

"Yeah, good call," he said. "Pearl's way better than Zetta!"


I...actually disagree. I could never understand why my grandma didn't go by Zetta and I really didn't like the name Pearl. It's just Earl with a P tacked on front (and to make matters worse, one of my grandma's brothers was named Earl...who even does that?! (My great-grandparents, that's who)). It's just, like, not a pretty name.

And who wants to be named after what is basically an oyster kidney stone? Gross. Pearls are the worst birthstone. They also happen to be my birthstone. I spent a good portion of my life detesting pearls.

I don't so much anymore, however. I understand their beauty and value.

And the name has grown on me through the years. In fact, I rather appreciate it now. I enjoy wearing something my grandma wore so well. Almost it convinces me that we should have named our children after ancestors (but...we didn't...at least not the girls (sorry, girls (the real reason was simply that I felt too much pressure to make everyone happy by naming baby after them that I just decided we wouldn't name baby after anyone (is that silly? Probably))).

Truth be told I'm actually quite happy with my middle name now but when I was Benjamin's age I really didn't like it one bit (I'm not even afraid to say that out loud because you should hear my mom talk about how much she disliked her middle name when she was growing up) so I thought it was funny that he also found it so repulsive (though, to be fair, there were several other names he couldn't wrap his head around either).

Anyway, I was telling my children the stories of the people in the pictures—all the hardships they faced—and the kids started picking up on the evening's theme. I know this because when I turned the page to feature yet another set of great-grandparents Benjamin asked, "Do these people have a tragedy, too?"

"Actually...they do!" I said and I told him the story of how Erma perished shortly after a car accident and how hard that was for everybody. I had him calculate some of the dates (she'd only been married for ten years and her little twins were just five years old when she died) and the kids were pretty upset about that.

"Then why do they look so happy?" Zoë asked. "She's just beautiful!"

"She is, isn't she?" I agreed. "But, of course, this picture was taken before the car accident when she was alive and well and, yes, happy. And it is so sad that she had to die so young and leave her little kids and husband behind. And they were all so sad to say goodbye to her. But look! See this picture over here. This picture was taken a few years later."

"They still look happy," Zoë noted.

"They are still happy," I said. "You can always find happiness. Happiness doesn't mean missing someone less and it doesn't mean that life is easy. You can find happiness even when life is really, really hard."

"That's good to know," Benjamin said.

"It really is," I said, and then I turned the page to reveal another set of grandparents.

"Do they have a tragedy?" he eagerly wanted to know.

"Actually," I said, "They do!"

"So many tragedies!" Zoë moaned.

Yes. So many tragedies.

And yet...each sufferer miraculously turned those pesky tragedies into a pearls. They let them irritate them a bit but then, ever so slowly, they learned to work magic around the tragedy, shaping it into a thing of beauty. They allowed that thing to help them be gentler, wiser, and better than they were before. So perhaps not such a tragedy after all.