Daisy's Namesake

For those of you who don't know, Daisy is named after the grandmother I never met - my father's biological mother who died when he was just 9 months old of TB. At the same time (or shortly thereafter - the details are fuzzy) his elder brother by two years, Martin, also died of the same disease. My father obviously escaped serious sickness, although I believe he was left with some TB scarring on his lung or something.

I only found out that the Grandma that I had known all my life was not my real Grandmother, when I was about 7 or 8 years old, possibly later - I don't remember the exact date. Unfortunately, the relationship with my dad's stepmother has been problematic; she never liked my mother and that pretty much put the nail in the already-closing coffin of my dad's relationship with her. As a result, there were some pretty uncool things that happened when I was a kid, one of which I remember personally being that she would invite my cousins into her bedroom to view her musical jewelry box and give them sweets (candy), while leaving me outside. At one point (for no good reason any of us can remember) my mother was banned from my grandparents' house and my dad and I would have to go over there without her just so we could see my Grandpa (or, more specifically I would be dragged over there.) Once I was old enough to assert my own wishes, I decided that, if my mother wasn't welcome, then I wasn't either. All of this was very sad because my Grandpa, George, was a lovely man and I only have great memories of him. I'm sad that he died with us estranged. Anyway, there were many more slights but that's not the subject of this post.

The reason I found out was because my parents decided it was about time that I learned the reason for this feeling of alienation that I had with my Grandma, presumably so I didn't grow up with some kind of complex about myself. So, they brought down my Dad's birth certificate one night and plopped it in front of me. Of course, I saw that his mother's name was Daisy Carpenter, vs. the lady I had known all my life as his "mother". (We also found out that my Dad was a year younger than he thought, but that's another story!) Ever since then, and especially since I saw the first pictures of her kind eyes and soft smile, I've wished that I could have known Daisy. My Dad looks so much like her, as do I in some pictures I have of myself at a younger age.

During the process of my parents applying to come out here to live, my Dad had to do some records searching to find out when and where his mother died and was buried and I still need to write that down somewhere. It's odd to me that he has never really been interested in finding out himself but I guess that's his choice; he never really knew her and so in some ways it makes sense. All I know is that my curiosity would have been (is!) greater as a result. I wish I had known about her sooner as I would have loved to have caught my Grandpa in a moment alone and asked him more about her. Unfortunately, everyone who would have known her personally at this point is now dead and buried and the most I can hope to find out is cold facts and dates.

So, this is why I named my daughter Daisy. Some part of me hopes that, in naming her Daisy, she might get to inherrit some of her qualities by-proxy, and I'll get to know a smidgin about the grandmother with the kind eyes that I never met.