I’m not saying a baby is like an essay, but I certainly tried to approach picking a name for my son the same way I look for decent titles. Yet, when I tried to apply my usual method to a human, something fell flat.
Two years before I pushed my son out of my body, I drafted a note on my phone with four or five names I liked. For my future daughter, I thought. For some ridiculous reason, I was convinced I’d have a daughter. So, imagine my face when the nurse on the other side of the phone congratulated us, “It’s a baby boy!”
Immediately, I panicked. Not because I didn’t want a boy. Not because I’d lost a bet (which I totally had). But because I had no title for that type of human, a male human. A person (a man!) was growing inside my belly and I had awful writer’s block, I couldn’t come up with a single name.