WHAT'S YOUR MONIKER?

In the beginning, the only moniker I owned was Alice Melissa Lewis, but it soon escalated into a whole bunch of identities, aka, George & Alice Marie’s daughter, Joanie’s sister, Oliver and Thelma’s granddaughter (#2), Gammie's grandaughter #2, Ollie’s, Jack’s, George’s, Dan’s, Torch’s, Joan’s, niece. Then I got my own first nick name, Missy. Later there were other nick names added, one of which was M’liss. That was soon changed to Melissa Sit DOWN!!!!!, and still later, Damn it Melissa, Sit Down!!!! Of course, much later, I became Mommy, and then Mom. Even that got changed to Oh! Mooommmmm! And then around the same time it was one word that was two syllables….Mo-om! Oh, and, I am also Aunt…what-ever.

I told my daughters that I would answer to whatever my first grandchild decided to call me. So, around the time my first grandchild, Savannah, was about nine months old, I went with my daughter, her best friend and the kids to a Mexican food restaurant for lunch. Savannah got to sit on a booster seat between us, so I thought this would be the ideal time to try to prompt some kind of name for myself from this child. The conversation went somewhat like this:

“Who’s this, Savannah?” Barbara asked, pointing at me.

Savannah did not really know what she was supposed to say yet, so there was no response. I chimed in pointing to myself with, “Savannah, say Queen Mother…”

This prompted a definite look of disapproval if not disdain from Barbara.

Still no response, so I tried again. Barbara was getting increasingly un-easy, afraid that Savannah just might say Queen Mother. So she said.

“Try to get her to say your name!”

We tried, but got absolutely no verbal response. Savannah just looked at me like she’d never seen such an abomination before, and our food was starting to get cold, so we gave the poor child a break. Savannah kept staring at me, like I was a bug on an ice cream cone.

After a few minutes, I tried again. This time, after about the third time, I begged her. “Say ‘Melissa’ sweetie!”

She started to utter something, and then smacked her chubby little baby hand down on the table three times and said,

“Mefffalla! Medaffala! Mfloonaah!”



To which Barbara said, “Hey! I think she said, 'Mena'!"

How she got Mena out of that, I’ll never know. I’d pretty much lost all hope of being called Queen Mother, so, I decided that Mena couldn’t be all bad, and I’d better stop while I was ahead. After all, it was much better than some names I’d heard people stick their grandmothers with.

Now, I am Mena to all our grandchildren. Because we told the Queen Mother story to Savannah, she and I will share a giggling session every now and then. She’ll say some thing like, “Queen Mother, can we make some Monkey Bread?” That will always get "Of course we can!" and we always dissolve into a fit of secret giggles. I love it when she does that.

Roy is “RoyPa”, and I think that's really sweet. He wishes it was something else, and I always remind him that he could be called PeePa, Crap-Pa, PooPa, or even Grumpy. He’ll answer to RoyPa every time……but not RollyPa. That’s cutting it a bit too close.

I’m still acquiring monikers, but then I’m sort of used to it after all these years. They all fit, and I still know who I am, and that’s a really good thing!