People start asking some time around kindergarten. It’s the fault of those LL Bean monogrammed backpacks so ubiquitous to the elementary school experience.
“What does the E stand for?” I asked one friend as she set down her Nacho Cheese Orange bag, emblazoned with CES.
This launched a class-wide discussion of middle names. A scientist even at a young age, I found that the kids with the LL Bean backpacks tended to have similar names.
“Elizabeth,” said Nacho Cheese, sitting next to me.
“Mary,” said Lake Placid Blue, Pink Carnation, and Lima Bean Green, a trifecta of normalcy.
It was suddenly my turn. I had an Oilily backpack that my mother purchased in the Netherlands, covered with a psychedelic pattern multicolored pattern of flowers.
“Holland,” I said.
“Like the country?” said the teacher.
“No. The tunnel,” I replied, squirming.
“That’s really…interesting. How did your parents decide on that?”
I took a breath. The teacher never asked the Marys and Elizabeths and Catherines why they were so ordinary. But the name Isabel Holland, belonging to the little girl in the back with the strange bookbag, was always a ripe topic for discussion.
On the day I was born, my parents and older sister were in New York at a photo shoot. My sister and father were models, and they were in a soap commercial that my mother Simply Could Not Miss, despite the fact that it was late November and she was due any minute.
In a fashion that would present itself over and over throughout my life, my mother decided to be late to the hospital. She chose to ignore the obvious signs that she was going into labor, as she had no desire to sit in a hospital for hours while doctors performed “useless” tests to “ensure that everything was going okay”.
As she sat, resolute but in obvious pain, my father, in a rare burst of authority over his headstrong wife, announced that they were driving her to the hospital this very minute.
Against my obvious wishes to be a native New Yorker, they climbed into my father’s orange hatchback Saab towards Morristown Memorial Hospital. But the bridge and tunnel crowd had other plans: my father, mother, and two-year-old sister sat in traffic for far too long. My arrival happened quickly after they wheeled my screeching mother into the delivery room.
Two days later, my mother was packed and fully prepared to leave the maternity ward.
Just kidding.
In keeping with her tendency to put things off until the last minute, the space where she was supposed to put my name- a name she was supposed to have scrutinized, presented to a psychic for a star consultation, and discussed with her therapist regarding its possible Freudian ramifications on my future psyche (“Parnika is a fine name, but she might have an unbalanced Id-”)- was blank.
So she called for help. She dialed her older sister Ellin- whose children’s names were all Welsh, and had recently welcomed a daughter named “Oona” into the world.
Ellin reminded my mother that as a child she had loved the name “Isabel”. It was ethnic and anti-Jessica enough for my mother, so she moved on to the middle name. There was no consideration of grandmothers, of childhood friends or even a favorite star from “Days of Our Lives”. My mother flashed back to the time shortly before my birth, and then it came to her: I would be named after a tunnel.
“What does the E stand for?” I asked one friend as she set down her Nacho Cheese Orange bag, emblazoned with CES.
This launched a class-wide discussion of middle names. A scientist even at a young age, I found that the kids with the LL Bean backpacks tended to have similar names.
“Elizabeth,” said Nacho Cheese, sitting next to me.
“Mary,” said Lake Placid Blue, Pink Carnation, and Lima Bean Green, a trifecta of normalcy.
It was suddenly my turn. I had an Oilily backpack that my mother purchased in the Netherlands, covered with a psychedelic pattern multicolored pattern of flowers.
“Holland,” I said.
“Like the country?” said the teacher.
“No. The tunnel,” I replied, squirming.
“That’s really…interesting. How did your parents decide on that?”
I took a breath. The teacher never asked the Marys and Elizabeths and Catherines why they were so ordinary. But the name Isabel Holland, belonging to the little girl in the back with the strange bookbag, was always a ripe topic for discussion.
On the day I was born, my parents and older sister were in New York at a photo shoot. My sister and father were models, and they were in a soap commercial that my mother Simply Could Not Miss, despite the fact that it was late November and she was due any minute.
In a fashion that would present itself over and over throughout my life, my mother decided to be late to the hospital. She chose to ignore the obvious signs that she was going into labor, as she had no desire to sit in a hospital for hours while doctors performed “useless” tests to “ensure that everything was going okay”.
As she sat, resolute but in obvious pain, my father, in a rare burst of authority over his headstrong wife, announced that they were driving her to the hospital this very minute.
Against my obvious wishes to be a native New Yorker, they climbed into my father’s orange hatchback Saab towards Morristown Memorial Hospital. But the bridge and tunnel crowd had other plans: my father, mother, and two-year-old sister sat in traffic for far too long. My arrival happened quickly after they wheeled my screeching mother into the delivery room.
Two days later, my mother was packed and fully prepared to leave the maternity ward.
Just kidding.
In keeping with her tendency to put things off until the last minute, the space where she was supposed to put my name- a name she was supposed to have scrutinized, presented to a psychic for a star consultation, and discussed with her therapist regarding its possible Freudian ramifications on my future psyche (“Parnika is a fine name, but she might have an unbalanced Id-”)- was blank.
So she called for help. She dialed her older sister Ellin- whose children’s names were all Welsh, and had recently welcomed a daughter named “Oona” into the world.
Ellin reminded my mother that as a child she had loved the name “Isabel”. It was ethnic and anti-Jessica enough for my mother, so she moved on to the middle name. There was no consideration of grandmothers, of childhood friends or even a favorite star from “Days of Our Lives”. My mother flashed back to the time shortly before my birth, and then it came to her: I would be named after a tunnel.
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