(Just so I don't confuse myself years down the road ... I wrote this when Soraya was 8 months old, but just never posted it. Probably because I never found the time to attach pictures to it. So that date up there, obviously, is wrong. ;)
My sweet little Soraya Sophie. I should tell you how much I love you. I should tell you what a joy you are. I should tell you about all the sweet little baby-things you do; like how when you wake up from a nap your face is nothing but pure joy. When you see me in the doorway with your eyes still all sleepy and shiny, your smile is just literally bursting. And after a second or two when you just can't contain it anymore, you fall into the fluff of the pillows and blankets, buried in smiles and wait for our kisses to come for your cheeks and that sweet spot on your neck that makes you squeal with laughter. You pop up a few more times and repeat this snuggly dance for everyone that comes to see "the baby is awake!?!"
But what I need to tell you; the reason I had pry myself away from your sweet, sweaty, dreamy snuggling at 3:30 in the morning when all hope of falling back to sleep without getting these thoughts out of my head and passed on to you was gone, is that ...
I hope you don't grow up hating your name.
We tried SO hard to find your name. We prayed. We read. We thought. We discussed. And our discussions usually melted into the nonsense of ...
"Let's just name her Onion."
I don't want to say I hate my name. I really don't when I see it on paper all sprawled out and official, Donielle Elaina Bebo Holden, but when I hear it just thrown out all casual-like, I sorta do. When I hear "Donielle" it doesn't feel like me anymore. It feels like some awkward former-self, struggling to find her way; find who she really is, and making lots of stumbles and mistakes along the way. When I hear "Ellie," it just feels like Me now. It feels like the girl who figured out how to be comfortable in her own skin; who scraped up enough confidence together to fake it; to be the one to go out of her way to say 'hi' first, to serve others even when I don't think there's a thing in the world I can do to make a difference, to do scary things; the girl that married your daddy, and the girl whose attention is stolen anytime she hears a little voice say "Mommee" anytime, anywhere.
Your daddy and I always loved the name Sariah from the time we first started throwing out names for some future babies way back a million years ago when we were teenagers. Babies.
When I was pregnant with Sam I remember making the drive home from work one day; just a day or two before we were going to have the ultrasound to see if our little biscuit was a boy or a girl. Names had been dancing around my head for months and in a rare moment of clarity I felt,
"If he's a boy, he's Sam. If she's a girl, Sariah."
When I was just very first pregnant with Jonas I spent those first couple weeks SURE that baby was a girl. All I could think about were girl names and the familiar memory of Sariah kept coming back. There is a reporter we hear most days on NPR with that name, so one day I looked her up and found her name was not actually Sariah, but Soraya (Sarhadi Nelson.) Soraya??? With an O? I'd never thought of it that way before. This opened up a whole new patch of possibilities and I found there are a million spellings for this very ancient name.
Over the years your daddy and I have gotten in the habit of watching a lot of foreign films. In the ones from the middle east there are often Sorayas. It seems to be a pretty darn common name in many countries from Iran to Iraq to Israel and even scattered around South America. Your daddy and I don't have a very good history of being decisive on names, but when you were in my belly after one evening of watching a movie where a Soraya was a main character, your daddy tentatively asked, "How about Soraya?" And my response was just, "Yes." And I felt it with all my heart. It was already the name that kept floating back to me and I had hoped he hadn't changed his mind about liking it. It was decided.
Just not the spelling.
Or the middle name.
Those would be the agonizing decisions that we would wrestle with until the last possible moment before we fled the hospital with you.
One summer day before you were born, on our last date together "before the new baby comes," your brothers spent a few hours with Gramma and Grampa Bebo at FunderLand and your daddy and I went to the temple and out to lunch. As we sat together at Olive Garden drinking strawberry lemonade and filling up on salad and breadsticks, I took the rare opportunity of having an uninterrupted conversation with daddy to pin him down on the spelling of this new girl-baby's name. On a scratch piece of paper plucked from my purse I began scrawling out all the possible variations and explaining to him what I knew about them ...
Seraiah is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. Always as a man's name, and I think once as a place. (It was vetoed by Daddy, as was Serraiah and any other possible variant. The 'Se' just didn't look right.)
Sariah. The tried and true Book of Mormon version. After all these years of seeing the Arabic and Persian spellings, Sariah just seemed so plain now, so American. I talked to a couple people who knew Sariahs in real life and read the comments of Sariahs on all the baby-naming websites, and something I heard a lot is that very, very often when people first look at the name their eyes don't see the 'i' and they just say, "Sarah." Or they think the 'i' is a typo and remove it to be helpful. Since I was the little girl whose every trophy or certificate of any sort of accomplishment was changed to read "Danielle Bebo" by some well-meaning person along the way, I definitely did not want to saddle you with a name that is just one-letter-off of the norm.
Sorayah. I've always thought adding an 'h' on a name that ended in 'a' lended so much more of a breathy, feminine quality to it even though you just see it and don't say it. But in this case your daddy and I quickly agreed that the 'h' on the end made it look like a karate chop. "Hi-Yah!"
There was a Sorayeh in an Iranian movie we watched. A sweet little girl, and seeing her name over and over in the subtitles with that breathy 'eh' at the end made me like the exotic-ness of it. After reading "Funny in Farsi," (one of my favorite books) and seeing the names in so many Iranian films, I put together that it seems to be a pattern in Persian names to have 'eh' at the end where you would normally have 'ah.' I kinda liked it the more I got used to it, but your daddy didn't. He thought it looked weird. It was out. (I was fine with eliminating some of the unending choices!)
Saraiah. The Hebrew version. We liked this one. We really liked it. We knew a girl in highschool named Saraiah just long enough to be intrigued by her but not long enough to find out anything bad about her. She was a new girl. Her skin color was some unknown combination of ethnicities to give her this amazing mocha skin and long black coils of hair. She seemed a million years older than all of us. She held her head high and was untouched by the childish nonsense of adolescence surrounding her in those formica desk/seat combos.She was just so impossibly cool her parents HAD to have been hippies. (Not hippies like us, Punkin. The kind of hippie parents that go by their first names instead of "Mommy" and "Daddy," grow weed instead of tomatoes, and live like gypsies.) I still think Saraiah is a beautiful name. We worried a little about the mess of vowels pouring out of the mouths of unsuspecting people who would have no idea how beautiful it was supposed to sound ... a-i-a-h ... I can just see it scrambling brains. It also seems so grown up. While you want your baby to have a beautiful name to grow into, you're also handed this tiny little baby; this sweet little person who is no bigger than a pet name for so many years. Some names just seem like so much to pin on a tiny little peanut. But this one was definitely in the running and I hated to finally let it go when we HAD to put SOMETHING on the birth certificate.
Soraya. This one had become so normal to us. It was both the Arabic and Persian version and seemed to be the most common spelling in the countries where people don't say, "how unusual" when they hear it. From all the research I had done it seemed like this was as close to the original as we could get without being the ancient Arabic grandmother of them all, Thuraya. (You're welcome, Sweetie.)
The spring of 2011 I planted your brothers a sunflower house in the garden. I had two packages of sunflower seeds that I alternated all the way around, "Cherry Rose" and "Soraya." Had I been the kind of mom I always think I want to be in my imagination, your baby announcements would have included a cute little packet of Soraya sunflower seeds for everyone who rejoiced at your birth to plant all over the country wherever they may be. (Had I truly been that mom that I imagine myself to be, your birth announcements also would have found their way into the mail instead of still sitting on my dresser 8 months later, but I digress.)
Soraya is also the Arabic name for Pleiades. If that is not an ancient, regal name I don't know what is. You are named after the stars, baby girl. A whole constellation. Yours is the name wise men gave to the brightness in the sky thousands of years ago.
Your daddy liked the phonetic simplicity of Soraya. It just makes sense. Much less flowery than Saraiah and easier to remember how to spell. Your Gramma Sherrie loved the spelling of Saraiah and was positive that everyone would pronounce Soraya as SoRAYa. I'm not sure what the verdict will be throughout the rest of your life, and while *most* people get it right, many people do try SoRAYa on their first attempt. (Although you've gotten your fair share of SaROYas, too. The whole world is going dyslexic.)
Even though you don't say the Ray in your name when you pronounce it, it's still there, and I kinda liked that. Your Great Grampa Ray passed away just 4 months before you were born. He knew you were coming and he knew you were a girl and I know he loved you already. When I said goodbye to him at the ICU (for what would turn out to be the last time) he held my hand for a long time sort of shaking it and patting it in his way. He had that happy look he gets in his eyes when you know he's feeling something and thinking about just maybe saying something, but since he's not one for saying much of the serious sort of stuff he just stayed like that for quite a while - holding my hand, patting it with his other hand, smiling at me and saying the sort of simple things like, "take care, now" ... "love you, too" ... "thanks for comin'" ... "drive careful" ... he patted his hand on my bulging belly and told me to "take care of that little one." A full-circle statement that made me feel truly grown-up, since he'd always called me "Little One."
After Sam was born it was always such a compliment to me that Grampa was proud of me for the kind of mom I was. He would just say little things, or nod his head and smile like I was doing a good job, but I heard from other people that he told them I was "just doing everything exactly right" and that I was a "good mother." Sometimes when he and great gramma would come to visit he would end up sitting at the nook in the kitchen watching me fix everyone a snack or get drinks and I could tell it made him happy. Like it reminded him of the good things in his childhood. He'd clip little comics about parenting from the newspaper to save for me, or little articles with tips he thought I might like. He'd ask me about the garden or canning and I knew he was proud of me. You would have stolen your grampa's heart, baby girl. I'm sure you have. I'm positive he makes this face a lot when he sees you.
So when the choice had to be made; when I had to just close my eyes and go with that inside part of me that just knows, you were Soraya. The sweet little simple name it seems no one has ever heard of that you can grow into and make into your own exotic, intriguing, royal name.
But the list for possible middle names was even longer ...
Soraya Eliana ... Since my middle name is Elaina I thought it would be nice to switch the 'a' and the 'i' around and pass it on to you in a kind of family history sort of way. Unfortunately it just seemed like too much of a flowery pretty-pretty-princess sort of name and I felt like it cheapened the beauty of each of the names. Daddy was never a fan either, so it was out.
Soraya July ... There's an artist/writer/poet/generally talented person with an awesome sense of humor named Miranda July that your Daddy really likes. He liked the way Soraya July sounded, but it didn't quite have enough of an emotional connection to really stick. Plus we were all pretty surprised you stayed cooking all the way to July and it would have been weird to name you that if you were born in June.
By the time you were born we were still left with four options ...
Soraya Meadow ... I've always loved the name Meadow and I never dreamed that your Daddy had become hippie enough over the years to like it, too, but he did.
Soraya Penny ... Your daddy came up with Penny, and earlier on this was his favorite. I worked on letting it grow on me, and it did. Your Gramma Sherrie loved how Penny Holden sounded - like you were holdin' a penny in your pocket. When you were born I tried hard to get daddy to say that this one was his favorite and I was totally ready to let him give you this sweet name, but he just kept saying he "didn't have a favorite." He "couldn't decide." He "liked them all."
Soraya Sky ... This was your Gramma Sherrie's favorite. Daddy and I really liked it, too. (Still in shock that my hippie-esque names are being approved by daddy!) I loved how it made Soraya sound like an adjective - like a color almost. In the end our only concern was that since we were saddling you with an unusual first name, we wanted to give you an easy, no-fuss middle name to fall back on just in case you wanted to opt-out.
And then there was Soraya Sophie. Soraya Sophie had been my favorite for months and it was even daddy-approved early on. I had been trying to find a sweet, simple, old-fashioned sort of name, almost a nick-name even to soften up the seriousness of Soraya. Effie, Tess, Elsie, Fern; nothing was quite right. But Sophie ... I am a sucker for alliteration. Then when I made an attempt to settle on a name with daddy BEFORE you were born, he mentioned that Sophie sounded a little like Sofa. Perfect. Just the mental image every girl wants conjured up at the mention of their name: a large piece of furniture.
So the day after you were born we found ourselves in the same predicament as we were when Jonas was born. Ya gotta name those babies before you can leave the hospital (and, oh, how we wanted to leave) or they end up with a 2 page birth certificate the rest of their life and you have to go through a formal name-change procedure.
When Jonas was born we narrowed it down to Jonas Henry or Jonas Gabriel and then we decided to ask Sam. He said Jonas Henry right away with no hesitation. (He liked the option of being able to call him Hank.) So we decided to do the same with you. We would let your brothers have a vote in the hopes of helping us decide. (At least they could help us narrow it down to two, right?) I asked them both separately over the phone, and both of them, without ANY hesitation, voted for Sophie. So it was settled.
They are very proud of your name, and when anyone asks,
"What's her name?"
"Soraya" is not an adequate answer.
They think everyone needs to know that your name is Soraya Sophie Holden. (They also sometimes insert the revelation that ALL of us in our whole family have the name Holden. Pretty cool, huh?)
So what recipe can I give you, baby girl, to make this memory stick? How about the food that I craved the most; that you craved the most when you were inside me.
Brussels Sprouts.
Now, hopefully you will have grown up eating these lovely little green balls often enough that you will love them, but let me tell you, for most grown-ups the thought of Brussels sprouts does not make their mouth water. Most of us have only ever had them boiled, and quite often they were the frozen grocery store variety.
Those were not the brussels sprouts for us, sweet girl.
What we wanted was that sweet carmel-ey goodness that comes from chopping those bad boys in half and sauteeing them in olive oil. With onions. And garlic. And sometimes even some bacon and mushrooms.
We ate these A LOT.
It will be interesting to see whether or not you like them when your big-girl-chewing-teeth come in. I may need to grab some next time we're at the store and let you nibble on some soon.
Soraya Sophie Sprouts
(There's probably better ways to do this, but I'll just tell you my made-up way.)
You'll need:
Fresh Brussel Sprouts
Olive Oil (unless you're opting to add bacon, then you can just use the bacon grease)
Chopped Onions - don't leave these out!
Garlic, Salt, Pepper
An optional sprinkling of chopped mushrooms is nice to sautee in there, too
Drizzle olive oil all over your sautee pan - you want it pretty much covering everywhere.
OR you can chop up a little bacon and cook that in the pan, then remove the bacon and cook your sprouts in the bacon grease.
Slice your brussel sprouts in half and if there's a hard part on the stem, trim that off, too.
After your oil is heated up good (medium/high heat) add in some minced garlic, throw in your chopped onions and start laying your brussel sprouts in the pan cut-side-down.
(Sometimes I would add in a little bit of chopped mushrooms, too, but the only real necessity is the onion.)
(If you don't have any fresh garlic you can always just sprinkle garlic powder over the whole bunch.)
You're gonna want to let them sit there for a bit. You want to let them get just a little darker than golden brown. For the first 2-3 minutes I would usually put a lid over the pan to help cook them all the way through, then I would start using tongs to peek at the underside of those sprouts for brownness.
Once you've got a nice carmel-ey brown on that side, then use your tongs to start turning them over to cook on the other side. You can kinda stir up the onions or other stuff you might have cooking in there every so often as needed, too.
Once they get a tad brown on the other side, you can be pretty sure they're cooked all the way through, so eat up while they're hot.
Make as many as you can fit in your pan, because they're almost as good the next day. You can mix 'em up in some rice for a yummy lunch. If there's not enough gooey carmel-ey flavor left in the pan you can stir in some butter or hummus or throw in a little corn.
(This is making my taste-buds sound pregnant, isn't it.)
We seemed to eat these sauteed sprouts as a side with salmon quite often, so my lunch the next day would be the last of the sprouts, salmon, and rice all mixed together. And now I'm hungry.
