A GRANDMOTHER BY ANY OTHER NAME

TODAY’S REVISION

For a while I’ve been wrestling with the whole grandmother/grandfather name thing.  Originally, if you remember, we thought up WooWoo and BooBoo in honor of Woodward and Bernstein.  John, of course, was Bernstein.  But then we needed to get serious.  What to call ourselves, hmmm.  Since John has some ethnicity, we discussed his being Zayde.  At first he wasn’t too keen on it but the kids liked it, he warmed to it, and he became Zayde.  And I was Nanie.  My kids called my mom Nanie so I guess there was kind of a tradition to it.  But I never felt it really fit me.  Sounded too nice.

While we were in Seattle, my sister Phyllis and I worked on the name.  We regretted the lack of ethnic labels.  But you are what you are.  Then she suggested that maybe we could start a new family tradition.  But what?  Many years ago, when Jonathan was a toddler, he had trouble saying PopPop.  It came out as Bebop.  And so my father became Bebop and not just to my kids.  Phyllis’s kids also called him Bebop.  Aha, I said.  Why don’t I call myself Beeba?  The feminization of Bebop.  Yes, we both agreed.  We will become Beebas.  Nathan will call us Beeba and Zayde and her grandchildren will call them Beeba and G-man! 

Of course I ran this by Ryan to see if it would be okay.  She said yes, so we are going with it.  Now, instead of an aging Nanie in a rocking chair, I see myself wearing a colorful scarf and taking Nathan to interesting places as his Beeba. 

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