Do you like or dislike your name? If you dislike it, what would you change it to? Is there a story behind your name?
I love my name. Love, love, love. When I was younger, I wasn't terribly fond of it, seeing as though it was an uncommon one but as I got older, I grew to appreciate it and eventually, love it. Which, I'm sure, is partly because of the story that accompanies it.
After getting married, my mother knew two things: she wanted her house on a corner lot (still no idea what that's all about) and two children; a son and a daughter. I believe she even wanted the son first and daughter second, which is exactly the order in which my brother and I came into this world.
My father desperately wanted a baby girl so he and my mother decided that if they had a girl, he could name her. For as long as I've been lucky enough to be their daughter and even as newlyweds and soon-to-be-parents, my mother and father have always been equal partners. So, they agreed that if the first child was a boy, my mother would get to name him. When Andrew John was born, they were the happiest first parents you could ever meet and four years later, Mom was pregnant again. Throughout the second pregnancy, she was positive the baby was another boy. Mother's intuition? Tummy was hanging low? She drank a mysterious potion that promised a penis? I have no idea. But even during her labour, she was sure I was a boy. Perhaps that accounts for the fact that I hate dresses, shoes, most pink things, and feel pretty strongly about never wanting to push a human being out of my bajingo? I'm not sure. But that's tangent material, right there.
My father, the optimist that he is, wasn't giving up hope until he absolutely had to but finally agreed, while in the hospital with my mother, that they really ought to come up with a boy's name in case he wasn't going to get his girl. I don't recall if they did come up with that second boy's name but somewhere along the line, my father decided that should he get his baby girl, her name was going to meet his criteria..."I want it to be beautifully French and just flow."
I'm not sure at what point my father told my mother the name he had decided on but after the doctor cleaned my naked little ass up and handed me to my mother, she asked the good doctor if she could tell my father it was a girl. And when they wheeled her out to see him, she told him, "You've got your Janelle Lynn."
For the rest of the day, he kept telling my mother, "I'll be right back, Hon. I've just gotta go look at her again." And Janelle Lynn has been Daddy's Little Girl ever since. Every year on my birthday, my mother always works in the story of the morning I was born. And every year, it's my favourite thing about my birthday.
Merci, mon père.
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