To Touch the Wild Goose Cry

I (Jason) stayed up good and late last night, because I had something I needed to do. Today, you see, our family was slated to open our "big present," which was the envelope containing some very important (or perhaps not so important...it all depends) information about the little jumping jack Janelle's been carrying around these months. That is to say, when we went for our twenty week prenatal ultrasound, the family compromise--in accordance with a friend's excellent suggestion--between those who desperately wanted to know the baby's gender and those who wanted a surprise was that the sonographer would take note of the relevant information and record it on a little folded card we supplied, and then seal it into an envelope, taking pains not to reveal it to us. We said we'd open the envelope at Christmas, and here we are.

I, being the one who didn't want to know, was not quite ready. Intuitively I realized that I needed to spend some time connecting with this little one without having a cultural category prepared. Based on recent experiences, I decided to use name searching as my vehicle to the spiritual process I sought.

I spent some time with baby name websites, playing around with various sounds, meanings, and associations, following rabbit trails from sound to idea to sound, flipping around between languages, cultures, genders...eventually I narrowed the standard Western selection down to the unisex names, and found a handful I could work with. But things really came together much better when I landed on the Native American section of one of the naming sites. Here were names that seemed to suit my purpose much better. Making my way through the alphabet, I soon had a list of them which are known to serve for either gender, which sounds interested me, and which meanings I was attracted to. I crawled under the covers with paper in hand, and gave myself over to swirling rounds of sound/meaning combinations, weighing and testing them in my heart and mind.

What I discovered through this practice about the coming of this child into my life was that I wanted this child to have a name that conveyed freedom, lightness, breath, air, freshness...something along that line, combined with some implication of sensory experience and connection. Of the list I was working with, I was most attracted to the meaning "Wild Goose Cry" (especially as a second name), combined with the meanings "to touch" or "fragrant" for first names, such that the child's name might mean, in combination, "Fragrant Wild Goose Cry" or "To Touch the Wild Goose Cry." The second of those was the one that really came home to me and I was able to put the paper down and go to sleep. I had made contact with part of what I feel this new parenthood experience will mean to me, and also part of what I hope for as I think about this new one's experience of this wild world we live and move in; the sky we peer through.

I think holding this baby for the first time will be to make contact with something untamed, intangible, and altogether lovely, and I hope (and will work and scheme to promote it) that this child will feel an intimate connection to the undomesticated elements and life expressions of the world she finds before her.

That's right, I wrote "her." This child will be female, and I for one found this evening that I just can hardly wait to meet her! A whole new person!

This morning when I was thinking over last evening's meditation, and looking forward to this evening's revelation, I felt glad that I had taken the time for that exercise. It seemed to me that the wishes and urges I had discovered in myself towards this new person were enlivening, humanizing ones, and though freedom and love of experience can have everything to do with gender at times, they are simultaneously gender-neutral values. I want this child--a baby girl, as it turns out--to feel free, and, when the wild goose lets loose its cry, for her to notice it, feel it, and understand.

You may be wondering whether we would hope to use this deeply spiritual name for our little one. Hmm. Probably not. You see, in order to achieve the meaning "To Touch the Wild Goose Cry", I was working with the name "Helki Saloso." Very lovely in its context I am sure, but for the Shenandoah Valley in 2010, it might come across as just a shade out of touch!

Last night's process was more for me and my relationship to the baby than about actual naming. Over the next few months, however, we will actually be in search of a simple, pronounceable, meaningful, easy-going name for this baby...information about any resources (or process tips) of which you might be aware and of which we might avail ourselves would be welcome.