Namely Marly

I hate squirrels

You know I live in a constant state of confusion. That’s true in many ways, but particularly when it comes to the topic of squirrels. I’m a vegan. I love animals. It’s true because it says so on my FAQ page. It’s right there in black and white, “I love animals.”

But I don’t love squirrels. Bitter bile builds up in my system at the mere sight of them. They stand for everything I’m against such as selfishness. It’s probably why they’re so squirrely. And that brings me to another probable reason I hate squirrels. My sisters used to call me “squirrely” when I was a kid. We could go into some psychoanalysis about what this really means, but I think I have cookies in the oven.

Another reason I hate squirrels is that I have three fruit trees in my backyard: a pear, a plum, and a peach tree (I didn’t plant them, but I do love the alliteration). In the many years I’ve lived in this house I have only had one pear. That’s it. This year I hoped would be different. I sprayed cayenne pepper religiously. I even gave an offering to the squirrel gods hoping they would have mercy on me.

Squirrels are not merciful creatures. In fact, they would taunt me while perched on the bough of one of the peach tree limbs sagging heavy with burgeoning fruit. No matter how many times I would run out to the backyard arms flailing yelling non-obscenities (I don’t want to offend the neighbors), I would barely get back to my kitchen window before they were back at it again.

Although I started the summer with high hopes, this year has been no different than the others. All the peaches are gone. All the plums are gone. We are left with only three pears…which I am guarding with a wire contraption (I can tell you more about that later). My dreams of making peach cobbler have been foiled yet again.

Then one day I took an unexpected journey to my family farm in southern Missouri. My dad left this land to me and my sisters last year. For many reasons I hadn’t made it to the property but most of all I think it was hard to return because I knew how special this land was to my dad. And now he’s gone.

Imagine my surprise when I trundled past the waist-high undergrowth (OK, weeds) and saw to the left of the barn a peach tree. And it had some ripened peaches ready for the picking. My spirits lifted immediately.

I thought to myself, “I think I’ll have to steal a couple of those peaches.” And then I realized that I wasn’t stealing. These were my peaches growing on my land. A gift to me from my dad. The trepidation of this trip and the agitation of my “unfruitful” summer vanished. At that moment, I knew everything was as it was supposed to be. It was all worthwhile.

In 1999, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones completed the first-ever nonstop balloon flight around the world. Maybe it takes flying in a balloon around the world to better understand what it takes to live life. I saw a video of Mr. Piccard at the July 2009 TED conference where he describes a metaphor between ballooning and life.

If we were to observe human behavior, it wouldn’t take long to notice that most of us work very hard to try to control life. We strive to move linearly in defined directions. But Mr. Piccard wants to remind us that life is more like ballooning than we realize. It seems the only way to actually steer a balloon is by understanding the atmosphere through which it is traveling. Earth’s atmosphere is comprised of several layers of wind flowing in different directions. To get to a destination 100 miles east, you don’t actually start flying your balloon in an easterly direction; instead you go up. In order to reach an intended direction in a balloon, you have to move vertically, not horizontally. It’s in changing altitudes that moves you into the jet stream that is headed toward your destination.

Mr. Piccard encourages us by saying, “Life is no longer one line going in one direction in one dimension.” Instead, life is made out of all the possible lines that go in all the possible directions in all the possible dimensions.

So how can you change altitude? Well, in a balloon one way to change altitude is to drop ballasts or weights. But how do you know what ballast to drop and what altitudes are flowing in the right directions? This is not always easy for the pilot in the balloon to know.  You need someone who is not in the balloon to provide assistance. Balloonists use weathermen. Mr. Piccard describes how early in their journey the weatherman asked them to fly at a low, slower-moving altitude. The two balloon pilots were frustrated with this recommendation because they only had so much fuel and didn’t think going so slowly would  allow them to make it to their destination.

They disregarded the weatherman’s advice and went higher where they found a jet stream that was moving at a much faster speed. Bertrand said he was feeling great pride in his piloting skills and called the weatherman to boast of their progress. He said the weatherman’s response was one he will remember his entire life: “If you fly too fast now, in a couple of hours you will be forced left and end up in the North Pole. You, the good pilot up there, do you want to go very fast in the wrong direction or slowly in the right direction?”

They listened to that weatherman and changed their altitude. As a result, 20 days after taking off  their 45,755 kilometer journey ended at the desired destination. Mr. Piccard said in a Popular Mechanics article that “all the journalists were saying it was the last possible adventure in the atmosphere,” but he’s off onto other atmospheric quests. His next goal is to fly around the world, nonstop, in a solar-powered aircraft. You can follow the progress of his adventures at the Solar Impulse site.

Mr. Piccard’s metaphor provides so many great questions for life. What destinations are you headed toward? What altitude is the best one to get you there? Who are the good weathermen that can help you know the best directions? What ballast (aka “baggage”) can you let go of? With this new year before us and Mr. Piccard’s advice under our belt, may we all soar to great new destinations in 2010!

If you doubt the impact that changing a name can have on a life, consider Barack Obama. Yes, it’s true that his given name at birth was Barack. So how, you may ask, did he change his name?

When he was a child everyone referred to him as Barry, the same derivative of Barack that his father chose. The story goes that his father chose a nickname just as a lot of people from other countries do when trying to fit into this culture. It seemed only natural then, that Barack who was given the same name as his father, would use the same nickname.

It appears that Barack took comfort in the name Barry. A black boy growing up in Hawaii with a white mother and grandparents would want to fit in somehow. A Newsweek article on Barack’s name shows that when questioned about the nickname, he described, how “he didn’t want to have to explain his name. ‘Barry’ was just a way of simplifying things—a small compromise to smooth the way in society.”

He continued to go by Barry until his early twenties. In college his struggle transformed from trying to fit in to trying to find himself. Friends encouraged him to claim his heritage and go by Barack. I can imagine how that must have resonated with him.  How better to stake a claim for new territory than putting up a flag that labels who owns the property. A name is like the flag testifying who lives here; who owns this life!

You may still think that changing a name from a nickname to a birthname is not technically a name change. But I would argue that it requires the same steps. It requires courage to ask people to call you something different. It’s why there can be comfort in being around new people where you can call yourself what you want. It’s when you’re around people who have known you for years that it’s difficult. People don’t like change. They don’t like it for themselves and they don’t like it for those they love.

Asking people begin to call him Barack wasn’t always easy. Some members of his family insisted on calling him Barry. Through the years he must have won this battle. I think he is a better person for figuring out who he is and how he would be named. Larry Ackerman describes one problem with politics: the expectation to try to be someone you’re not. Maybe having gone through this this process of figuring out who he really is can help him be an authentic leader. I also think the name Barack suits him much better. We all would be better served for this opportunity. To be self reflective. To consider our identity. To choose how we will be named.

This is Adee. Isn’t she lovely?  She didn’t start out in this world going by the name Adee. In fact, even before she breathed her first breath she was called by a different name.

I called her Rachel. We received hand-stitched towels and blankets with the name “Rachel” in soft pink hues. I loved the sound of it then, and still do.

When she was little I would sing softly to her as she would fall asleep, “I love you Rachel, oh yes I do. I love you Rachel, to you I’m true. When I’m away from you, I’m blue. Oh, Rachel, I love you.” This love affair between me, my daughter and her name continued until she was about 8. And then one day, things changed. Another Rachel in her same school. Believe it or not, up until this point she wasn’t really aware of many other girls with the name Rachel. In that regard, she felt rather unique. But no more. At an age where she was beginning her search for individuality, her name made her feel too common. Rachel was too passe.

Around this time she became Adee. A derivative of her middle name, Adele. A middle name we both share. Not aDEE, but AHdee. Rhymes with daddy.

It didn’t spill off my tongue right away. It felt a little awkward at first. Some of her friends refused to call her Adee. Some adults still won’t call her that. Her life was a precious gift to me. And I named that life Rachel. But her life is her own. How better to claim it for herself than by choosing her own name? Her own life’s label.

She calls herself Adee. My gift to her is to recognize her life. Her choice. I call her Adee.