WeePlanet

Before switching off the light last night I glanced through e-mail and saw a note from Nurse Jill.  She was checking to see if I knew I had called Jaiel “Javid” twice in my last blog post.  Turned out I wrote about contributing to “Javid’s college bank account” and referred to “our ob/gyn who delivered Javid yesterday.”

Whew.

I fixed the post this morning, knowing this to be a mental circuit bound to cross and recross.  I think I may actually have a genetic predisposition; when I was a kid my parents called my brother and I by each other’s name so often, we used to joke our real names were Dave Tony and Tony Dave.  My Mom is still prone to call my sister by the names of her own sisters.

As a kid I remember thinking it all very funny, apparently not attuned at that developmental stage to obvious foreshadowing.  The joke, as they say, is on me.

AL has also already called Jai by his brother’s name at least three times to his face.  So he’s got it coming to him from both sides of the double helix.

In some ways it would feel strange if it didn’t happen.  Javid’s been on our minds and lips so often in the last 20 months, while Jai’s got barely two days under his belt.  And of course we are here in Pennsylvania Hospital, which we will likely always think of first and foremost as Javid’s home.  The three of us are here now, but we’re just passing through.  In our mind’s eye at least, this is his domain.

Freudian it may be, but there’s not too much pain in this current short circuit, which will undoubtedly see us referring to the new little boy by his brother’s name for some time to come. As we’ve prepared for this new baby’s arrival, we’ve been prepping ourselves to acknowledge that a part of us will often think of Javid when we look at Jaiel.  That’s okay, because he was a good little boy, that first one, for all that he didn’t stick around for very long.

The stranger moment is the one coming down the road, when we first refer to Javid as Jai.  Even knowing it will happen, that’s likely to hurt.

We’ll have to remind ourselves, as mind and lips grow more accustomed to this second little boy, that there’s also nothing wrong with taking present happiness and rerouting it back through the circuits of our memories of his big brother.  Javid Jai.  Jai Javid.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.