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| A little smoothie, then a swing |
Funny thing: though we have always referred to my son's privates by their proper name (never Doodie, Peter, Long-John Tiddlywacker nor Wee Willie Winkie), inexplicably, my husband and I have taken to calling our daughter's bits by the name my mother, her mother, my sister, my aunts and all my female cousins on my mother's side know it: Maryjane. Accent on the 1st syllable.
Don't worry: I'm not going to tell you I grew up thinking it was actually called a Maryjane; I was well aware the real name sounds a lot like a city in Saskatchewan. But I thought everybody else knew what a Maryjane was, too.
It baffled me: who, I used to wonder, would name their child Maryjane? And the shoes! Tee hee hee!
When I was 30-something I finally figured it out: they didn't laugh because they didn't know! All that time I'd been talking about my Maryjane, and folks had no clue...! That explained a lot.
What happened was, my sister and I were having a rare visit on a mall bench, when past us walked a young woman, midriff bared, wearing low-riding sweatpants imprinted across the backside with "Bum". You've see the ones.
"Should write "Maryjane" on the front," I snorted. To which my sister burst out, "Did you know no-one else calls it a "Maryjane?!!"
"What?!!!"
My world changed, forever separating events into one of two time periods: pre or post Maryjane. I commenced calling it what, these days, you're supposed to: the one that rhymes with Regina.
It was my husband who first transgressed, six years later, shortly after our daughter came home from hospital, at one month of age; he was changing her diaper and the word just came out. A look was exchanged, and the family tradition resumed - at least in private.
I don't feel so bad about it, now that she's proven she knows what it's really called. We don't seem to have done her a disservice, just as we don't seem to have done our son any huge favour by using only the medical term: he has, without our help, come up with a whole list of alternative names for his penis.
It's just another family word: we watch TV in the limner, eat peentybut cuuties, ask for our scot-bwot with a wat-cwot and make sure we wash our Maryjane. Silly words that only our family would use, that connect the generations together with a common, if not silly, bond.
Final note: in the BC mining village in which I grew up, there was a family with two kids, named - get this - Maryjane and Peter! My sister and I wondered what was wrong with their parents!
Garden 14: Harvest
Garden 13: Abandoned Stuff, Things of Beauty
Garden 12: Death and Potential
Garden 11: Japanese Maple Tree and Sedum (?)
Garden 10: Foxglove and Weed Digger
Garden 9: Veggies and Sweet Pea
Garden 8: Gnomes and Slugs
Garden 7: The Lady Next Door
Garden 6: Euphorbia and Rusted, Metal Things
Garden 5: Cement Bench and Wallflower
Garden 3: Family Portrait
Garden 2: The Neighbours'
Garden 1: Lilac Bush and Abandoned Cans
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