Given a Name

Only a few pages in my baby book were completed, but this was one of them. My mother may not have recorded every childhood milestone, yet she made certain to preserve some of the details of the day I was baptized. She wrote my full name in her beautiful handwriting: Nancy Jean Watson. The ceremony took place at St. Peter’s Church in Concord, New Hampshire. The priest who baptized me was the Reverend Thomas J. Hannigan, my uncle and my mother’s only brother. Ernest Edes was named as my godfather and Betty Edes as my godmother.

Both of my parents were Catholic, so my baptism would have been an important beginning for each of them. It welcomed me into the Church and connected me to the faith they shared. Having my uncle perform the ceremony made the day even more closely tied to our family. He was present not only as a priest, but also as my mother’s only brother and my uncle.

Of all the pages my mother might have chosen to complete, it is meaningful that she recorded this one. Yet the blank spaces leave me with almost as many questions as her handwriting answers. The line asking whom I was named for was never completed. So were the questions asking who suggested my name, what other names were considered, and who was present.

My mother was working full time and raising three children born within only a few years of one another. The fact that she attempted to document any of these early moments was an accomplishment. I value every word she took the time to write, especially because I can still recognize her careful handwriting.

Now, decades later, I can read the names my mother preserved, but I cannot ask her to complete the empty lines. The page records an important beginning: my baptism, my welcome into my parents’ faith, and the day my name became part of our family story. At the same time, its unanswered questions remind me how much of every family’s history lives only in the memories of those who were there.