Virtual Flaneurism

Today is my nephew Lou's third birthday, and in his honor, I feel the urge to post a short section from a piece I wrote while in college about his birth. Feel free to ignore/skip/leave me a bitchy comment about how this blog ain't for self-promotion or nephew-egrandizing/offer me a swanky book deal/dance the dance en fuego/do the Freddie.

I spent the spring of my sister’s pregnancy listening to James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” on repeat on my iPod. The song was a lullaby that Taylor had written for a nephew who had been born and named after him while he was on the road. I had always loved Taylor’s music, but it wasn’t until my sister became pregnant that I came across this song. The story behind the music spoke to me. Having just started guitar lessons, I worked out the chords and began practicing a rendition of the song in my apartment. Part of me hoped I could play the song for the baby, or that my sister would be equally inspired by the story and name the kid James or even better Michael, after me. My affection for this unborn baby was matched only by my embarrassingly self-serving desire for him to bear my name.

Unfortunately, my sister and her husband did not choose to give the name James or Michael to their baby. Part of that was my fault: ever lazy, I stopped practicing the song and never gave them a chance to be touched (as surely they would have been) by my playing. But the two future parents also insisted on cycling through a battery of odd and awkward names. My brother in-law’s personal favorite, Jebediah, conjured up the image of a polygamist lumberjack living in the woods of Montana, while my sister had gotten her pick, Gabriella, from a dog whose owner she’d once babysat for. Family members regularly vetoed these names, but to no avail. Taking an alternate approach, I plagued them with numerous superior over-Americanized names.

“What about, say, Henry or Thomas or Michael? Those are good names. Michael is a good name. What about Michael? I really like the name Michael. Michael Michael Michael Michael. I don't know any dogs named Michael.”

They were not open to persuasion. The decision came down from above: the unborn boy – and a boy it was to be – would be named Lucian.

“Lucian?” I asked when my mother told me over the phone. I jotted it down: LEUTIAN. “Like the islands? In Alaska?” I was familiar with the Aleutian Islands. My grandfather had been stationed there during World War II working radios.

My mother sighed. “No, not like the islands. It’s Irish. Lucian.” She spelled it out letter by letter. I scribbled out my mistake and rewrote it correctly, still wondering where they had discovered this unusual name. My mother added, “They’ll call him Luc.”

I frowned. “Like Jean-Luc Picard?”

“Yes. With a C. But they’re calling him Lukie.” A nickname for a nickname. I was as impressed by the name’s flexibility as I was with my sister’s stubbornness for naming her child something utterly obscure. I had to admit that Lucian was definitely better than Jebediah or borrowed pet names.

“Lukie is cute.” I said, jotting that down too.

“But that’s not with a K,” she said, somehow guessing at my second spelling mistake.

I narrowed my eyes. “Then how is she spelling it?”

“With the C.”

“A C?”

“Yes.”

I was confused. “But that would be Lucy.”

My mother did not correct me, but continued in a low, serious tone. “I already tried to tell her that.”

I reeled with outrage at the future pummeling to which my sister was subjecting her son. I finished the conversation with my mother and dialed my sister’s phone. I thank God that she was home and there was no passage of time to dull my bewildered rage.

“Hello Mikey!” she said cheerfully into the receiver, but this was no time for phone courtesies.

“You cannot name your baby Lucy,” I blurted out. There was a short silence as she considered what I’d said.

“His name is Luc, not Lucy. I’m just spelling it with a C because Luc has a C. I can’t put a K in his name if there isn’t a K. There’s no K.”

I scoffed. It was apparent that she had used up all her creativity in naming the boy Lucian and saved none for nicknames.

“What is my name?” I asked her. It was an easy question.

“Michael.”

“And what is my nickname?”

“Your nickname is Mike.”

She paused.

“Oh.”

I hung up the phone content that I had saved my nephew from a lifetime of wet willies and Indian burns.

Baby Lucian, as he was called for the first few weeks of his life, was born on Friday the 13^th in July. Born in the seventh month of the (two thousandth and) seventh year, his birth date was riddled with superstition. It was no surprise to me that his birth weight came in at seven pounds, seven ounces. This, I told my friends, was only a small taste of how special this baby was going to be.

I was working in New York for the summer, so my first glimpse of Lukie was through photographs my father had taken at the hospital. I eagerly showed shots of my nephew to all of my friends. They all remarked on how similar he and I looked – and as a proud uncle, I had to agree – and there was a general consensus among men, women and pets that he was the most adorable baby ever born on planet Earth, bar none.

One photograph stuck out as the group favorite; ever the proud grandpa, my father had taken a shot of a nude Lukie spread eagle on the hospital changing table.

“Dear god,” my roommate cried, looking at the photo. “That baby’s testicles are enormous!”

Surprised and eager to see what he meant, my friends and I all huddled around the computer. I don’t know how I’d missed it: they were gargantuan. Concerned, I searched the internet for information about proper baby testicle size. It was one of the less acceptable phrases I77’d ever typed into a search engine, but for Lukie I risked the pedophilia charges. My search yielded good results: it turned out that massive baby testicles were normal, or at least that they occurred often. Lukie was an average baby.

Still, I was as proud as my father. “That baby has bigger testicles than you do,” I told my roommate. Though offended, he did not have the balls to disagree.