Carrot

She has mahogany hair pulled into two, long, luxurious pony tails, almond-shaped brown eyes and a name that will turn the other girls green with envy in high school. A name not everyone could pull off. It is beautiful. She is beautiful, and though I think all children are beautiful and I understand, now, at 37, the mistakes of my youth; I understand that soft, new skin and powerful young bodies are always beautiful, there is no question about it, she shakes my faith because she is beautiful in a different way. In a way that will be difficult for some of these children, who are not beautiful in her way, in seven years.

She stands at the top of the steps, a few feet from her oblivious father.

"Carrot." She says, her nose wrinkled into a teasing pout, at the sight of my own beautiful red-headed boy.

He puckers his lips, scrunches up his face and sticks out his neck in her direction with his hands on his hips. He looks ridiculous and it is all I can do not to laugh. "No," he barks, a foot-stamp evident in his voice, "Not Carrot. GARRETT."

"Carrot." She sings again.

It is not cruel. Perhaps she is too young for cruel or perhaps she will always be one who uses teasing kindly, to include, not exclude. It is light, laughing, but not derisive.

"GARRETT." My son repeats emphatically before he runs from her with his funny, shuffling run that does not bode well for future coordination. His genes are poor on both sides for grace. He will be a tall, lanky, clumsy boy. May he be as kind and loving as his father and less sarcastic than his mother.

His face is still scrunched into a storm-cloud of dissatisfaction when I join him at the bottom of the ramp. The girl with the pretty name waits a few feet away, having gone down the steps to her father.

"Why does she call me that?" He bleats.

"She thinks it's funny," I tell him. "You can tell her no thank you, or you can ignore her until she uses your proper name."

We walk toward the car in our customary little ball. Nate in the stroller, Saige and Garrett holding either side, Quinn "helping" me to push by standing awkwardly in my way so that any forward progress comes only at great inconvenience to me. Strangely, Garrett picks her side, so that Saige and Quinn and I are not a buffer between them.

"Goodbye, Carrot," A----- calls.

"A-----, that's not nice," her father notices at last.

"I don't LIKE THAT." Garrett tells me with crossed arms and an angry twist of his body.

I understand, I want to say, it's not nice, is it, it must hurt your feelings that she won't use your right name. But I can't choke it out around the sudden tears. I have to pull my sunglasses down and wipe my nose surreptitiously with my hand in the church parking lot.

Because, oh god, you will, though, won't you? You will long for her teasing sing-song voice. You will walk down a certain hall only to pass her and have her smile and call you Carrot.

All I can hope is that her voice will keep the edge of kindness and that your self esteem will be such that you see humor and not rejection. I'll hope it with all my heart for the next seven years, on the off chance that it will make it true.