I am Sam

As most parents do, Dave and I put much thought and care in naming our child. Initially, I wanted to name him Texas because I wanted a flock of children named after states; Dave wasn’t sure what name he wanted but Texas wasn’t on his list of possibilities. He liked tried and true names, such as Gordon and Brenda. He did convince me that whatever name we chose, it should be a name that could weather all ages. Texas may be a fun name for a 2 year old and maybe an 80 year old but as a 40 year old man with a family, Ol’ Tex Ferguson might have a difficult time finding and keeping a job.

I put the name Samuel on our list of possible names for many reasons not the least of which was the vision of the 40 year old handing our resumes. Dave and I agreed if we chose this name, we would call him Sam. There are many good Sams out there—Sam I am from Green Eggs and Ham, Uncle Sam, and when I was a kid, my mom called me Sam after Samantha Stevens from Bewitched. If Sam turned out to be a Yuppie, he could introduce himself as Samuel. But it was a name among many names. At the time we crossed Texas (as well as all other state names) and Brenda off our list, we still didn’t know the baby’s gender.

Then when I was five months pregnant, Gram, Scott and I took a drive out to “The Amish” (my Gram’s name for that part of Western NY) to have a piece of furniture made. We drove up to an old bat and board barn and as I got out of the car, the door of the barn flew open and a bunch of blond boys in their black hats, suspenders and bright blue shirts ran toward us. And right behind them, dressed identically, a man walked out of the barn and said, “Hello, my name is Samuel.” I knew right then without sonogram confirmation of the baby’s gender that I would have a boy and I would name him Samuel.

The weekend Sam was born, my great Aunt Pat sent me a card telling me that in the Old Testament, Samuel was born to Hannah, an older woman who had tried unsuccessfully for years to have children, she pleaded to God for a child and when she had her son, she named him Samuel because it means, “God listened.”

My infatuation with names is not always so fun for Sam, my literal minded 3 year old. I will let people call him what they will except for the racist Sambo. The people in the neighborhood tend to call him Sammy. One day he asked me, “Mama, why does Ella call me Sammy?” I told him that is how some names work and listed names you can put a y at the end of, “Billy, Paigey, Owey, Danny, Bethy…”

He stopped me from my unending list, “But, my name is just Sam.”

Dave and I may have given him his name but at some point he came into possession of it. His name’s origin is of no concern to him. It’ll be years before he understands the connections to the Old Testament or Bewitched. I may like to riff on names but that’s all fluff to him. His identity is forming and it is forming around this name—Sam, “just Sam”. Already he has marked it as his own.