Several weeks ago we had a string of beautiful nights with a harvest moon hanging low and ripe in the early evening sky. I’d take Katie to the park after dinner for a bout of high-intensity swinging to help regulate her sensory system before bed, and we’d both watch the moon rise.
Katie has always been fascinated by the moon, starting with the classic bedtime story, Good Night Moon. To be honest, I am too. Maybe it’s because of my name. Years before Katie was born I looked it up in the baby name book. There it was: Cynthia, meaning goddess of the moon.
When I was a kid I hated my name because it sounded prissy and stuck up. On the first day of school I dreaded the moment the teacher would call out Cynthia instead of Cindy and my classmates would snicker. In second grade I read books from the young adult section and wore boy’s jeans on rainy days, traits that branded me like the cattle wandering the surrounding hillsides. I yearned to fit in and my name didn’t help. Why couldn’t Mom have named me something basic and serviceable like Debbie or Karen or Allison?
When I was 22, I changed my mind. Five years younger than the average law student, a sophisticated name seemed a blessing designed to make up for my rural hometown and lack of meaningful job experience. I couldn’t tell people I’d worked summers as a security guard at the Alameda County Fair (oh yes, I most certainly did), but I could flaunt my name.
I told my boyfriend that I wanted to drop my nickname because Cindy sounded like a high school cheerleader with pigtails. He thought this was ridiculous (looking back, he probably loved the image), so I stayed Cindy until we graduated and I moved to Sacramento without him. There I switched to my given name and haven’t looked back—except when I’m at home.
When I told Mom about the change she shook her head.
“You won’t call me the name you picked for me?”
“No,” she said, hands on her hips.
“Why not?”
“It’s my parental right to call you Cindy.”
Parental right? Twenty-five years later, my mother still refuses to call me Cynthia. Is it any wonder I ended up a lawyer?
But maybe my affinity for the moon has nothing to do with my name. Perhaps it’s buried in my genes. I’ve always been a night owl, reading with a flashlight beneath the covers long after my sister Kris was asleep. On the rare nights my two sisters and I are back under my parents’ roof we lounge on the sofas with Mom, our socked feet curled beneath us, and talk until 2 or 3 in the morning. Our laughter echoes down the hall. When Jen and I visited our middle sister in Boston, we stayed on California time so we could watch Elimi-date and gossip after Kris went to bed. Dad has stayed up half the night analyzing statistics for his fantasy baseball league, and my brother Tom’s favorite thing (before kids, that is) was to stay up late and then sleep until noon. So it could be something flowing in the blood that stretches back to Mom’s Swiss ancestors and Dad’s Swedish/Irish roots.
Maybe the name Cynthia just sealed my fate.
What do you think? Are night owl tendencies due to nature, nurture, or something else entirely, such as a name?
Until next time,
Cynthia Patton
