Tuesday, June 21, 2005

More Interesting Stuff About My Dad

During my father's stay in the brig, he wrote long letters to my mom. She wrote medium-length letters in return. With a toddler (my sister) running around the house, it was all she had time for. Some of their communications discussed the naming rights of the baby to be. (me)

Mom thought that if I were a boy, I'd be named after my father... But what if I were a girl?
Thankfully, I am a girl; which spared me the moniker Willian Daniel Phillips the Third. Dad would have nicknamed me Billy Da Turd. He liked to play with words. Tomatoes = tamaygers, etc.
Perhaps there is a Billy Da Turd in an alternate universe. I wouldn't know. This universe is strange enough to keep me busy.

Anyway, my name is a blend of fact and fiction. In fact, my father is Welsh. Pure Welsh. All 4 of his grandparents were born in Wales. They had little Welsh babies who grew up, met, and married in America; whereupon they produced little Welsh/American babies.

My mom, on the other hand, is half Sicilian and half everything else.
I get the red hair for both sides of the gene pool.

In fiction, dad's grandparents were born in a lovely green valley filled with flowers and bunnies and happy, plump people. They called their paradise "The Valley of Sharon"; and everyone lived happily ever after.

Dad wanted to name his daughter after the valley where his grandparents were born. Mom thought it was a wonderful story, and so I was named after that valley.
When she wrote my father to tell him he had a new daughter, he was delighted. But he couldn't figure out why she'd named me "Sharon". He had no recollection of the story he'd made up.

It doesn't bother me that my name has no base. People name their kids all kinds of weird things. I mean, since I was born in 1969, I could have been saddled with "Moonbow" or "Dandelion" or any number of names you won't find on a toothbrush.

And besides. At least I'm not a Turd.