By Jody Worsham
All rights
reserved for court costs for legal name change.
New
grandmothers and grandfathers get to pick the name they want their
grandchildren to call them or so I’ve learned.
My friends can decide to be Nana, Grandmaw, MeMaw, Big Mama (although I
certainly would not pick that one for myself even though it would fit), Mimi or
Pop, Gramps, G-daddy, PawPaw, Poppa etc.
I had
several names picked out for myself, grand names for a grand mother…such names
as Grand MaMa with the accent on the last Ma pronounced with a slight French
accent. It didn’t matter. The first grandchild had her own ideas about
what she would call me. Early on I
thought I would be forever known as BeeBee.
Then she got tubes in her ears and I became Mimi. Then we adopted her and her brother and after
a lot of confusion and explanation to their friends, I became just Mama which
is what I had called my grandmother.
Recently, and
with no indication we would be going into the Witness Protection Program
anytime in the future, the seven-year-old has dubbed me “Heymama” as in:
“Hey! Mama! Watch this.”
“Hey! Mama! Wanna
see what I caught?”
“Hey! Mama, can I have a Dr. Pepper?”
At some
point “Hey, Mama” became “Heymama”.
Maybe my hearing is declining (duh,
really?) and he thinks he must first get my attention by yelling “HEY” and when I turn toward the sound he
follows up with “Mama”.
But I won’t
fret about it. It could be worse. He could have called out “Oh, Mama!”
