Adoption Stories

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Meredith Resnick, M.A., M.S.W., L.C.S.W., is a health writer and licensed social worker. She is also the mother of two adopted daughters. See full bio

August 27, 2009, Parenting

The List of Names That Was—Then Wasn’t

Names are something most parents fantasize about. I did.

My husband's pre-adoption notes were filled with calculations. He's a CPA so it fits. His lists detailed every cost and exemption he could find for an adoption: filing fees, medical studies, travel expenses, visas, homestudy, INS fees, background checks, immigration. And then there were the costs of myriad other things: feeding a family of four (rather than two), clothing, furniture, school supplies, toys, games, jewelry, trips (just to name a few).

My lists? They cataloged names. I'm not really a methodical person but these I categorized: biblical, unisex, family, popular, traditional.

My husband took his first step toward fatherhood by making lists of expenses. I took my first step toward motherhood by making lists of names.

My lists helped me the same way I think the calculations helped Jon. They gave me a chance to organize my thoughts, to manage the enormity of simply getting ready to become parents.

Every list helped quell my anxiety just a little: from the biblical names lists I scratched in the margins of my journal (Rebecca, Isaac, Adam, Rachel), to the unisex names I wrote above the masthead on the front page of the Los Angeles Times (Evan, Devin). There were the family names (Hannah, Gordon) and the traditional names (David, Elizabeth). I even had one trendy name--Brooklyn [hey, my mother was born there]).

I jotted notes while I spoke on the telephone or ate breakfast. Stopped at a light in my car I'd grab a scrap of paper in case I heard a name on the radio I'd not thought of. I contemplated. I wrote. I mused.

Though I never got to use them in the sense of naming someone--our daughters were older when they came to us and we became a family--those lists I made still, somehow, helped make them a little more real to me before they actually became real to me. The fact that they already had names would teach me that, just like with most things about parenthood, this was another lesson--an early, pre-parenthood one--in the practice of letting go.