How Far is Heaven
Madalyn's word for music is skid-nic. I still wonder sometimes if she's actually saying "sing it," but there's no way of knowing, try as I might, to get her to help me figure it out.
I've mentioned before that she's definitely her father's daughter. She has remarkable rhythm at her age and an absolute obsession with music of any kind. Shaun's pulled out his fancy computer speakers to the great room and she's grooved her way through rap, country, Christian, and jazz. For a while her favorite choice was Dave Matthew's "Old Dirt Hill," but now she's developed a completely irrational insistence upon Los Lonely Boys- any time, all the time, and them only- and particularly, "How Far is Heaven," which Evan calls "the how far is Evan song" because he thinks they're serenading him.
This morning we tried to offer other choices, but noooo. She was determined to get a good 6 or 7 plays out of that song before we turned it off for good.
I guess of all the songs she had to develop a dependency on, this isn't such a bad choice. From the first few notes, I'll admit, I feel transported to some Mexican beach and can almost taste the salt on the lip of my Margarita glass. She's asked me to turn it on both while I cleaned and while I cut up their morning bananas, and both times I did so with a grudge only to be pleasantly surprised as I found myself enjoying it.
This morning, when it bounced off our ceilings at the early hour of 7 am, Shaun said, "I think Madalyn has some Mexican somewhere in her blood."
I said, "Well she is the great-granddaughter of Nita Nell."
And now you have to take a quick tangent with me so I can tell a story on her, my mother's mother...
When her mother, my great-grandmother, was in college, she and her roommate decided they'd come up with the most beautiful name ever to grace human ears...Nita Nell. Whoever had the first baby girl after they married and graduated would get to use the name, that was the deal.
My great-grandmother won. (Nana would say she lost.)
"Well it's a fine name, I guess, except I was a blue-eyed and blonde-haired little thing- people used to stop the car and ask if I were Shirley Temple, for Heaven's sake!"
She claims it caused a sort of identity crisis early on; to be so mismatched to her name- to have a perfectly good English name that suited her looks combined with a hispanic one that in no way fit her. It was like the clashing at the Alamo all over again.
But let's be honest here and admit that there was no avoiding it. She came from a long line of bad names and hers was just one more bead on that ancestral necklace. Her mother was Juanita Opal and Juanita's sister was Thelma Ione. Under that fluorescent light, Nita Nell's not so bad.
But you never know, Nana... Madalyn might one day wish her name were Nita Nell. Especially if her tastes keep developing in this recent direction. Nita may just cycle into your ancestry for a third time with your great-great-granddaughter and if it does, I hope you'll be able to appreciate it... for better or worse, till death do you part, and God gives you a name better suited.
(And I, for one, can't wait to hear what it is.)
