The Name Game continues….
My mother gave me a weird name. I grew up where most girls had names like Julie, Mary, Marla, Janis, Debbie, Susan, Sharon, Randy, Robin, Eileen, and Liz. As a matter of fact, there were so many girls named Marla they were always called by their first and last names no matter where we were whether in the playground or the classroom. It always made me feel like a weirdo to be the only Benita. What made it worse was most people would insist on the following:
Your name means “pretty” in Spanish.
It does not, that is Bonita which is what most people assumed my name was, and at that point they would ask if they could call me Bonnie. For some reason, I did not want to be called Bonnie. I am not sure why but I felt it would give people the impression my name was spelled with an “o” instead of the “e” and the entire reason my mother gave me this strange name was because she wanted to name me after her father, Benjamin. She could have named me Beth, a name that would have fit in perfectly with the above list of popular names amongst my peers, but I guess that would have been too easy. Yet, I felt some mysterious obligation to carry forth the name of this dead relative I never met.
I was the “only” Benita at DeWitt Clinton School, (and probably in the entire Chicago area) until that fateful day in either 5th or 6th grade, I cannot remember which, when a new girl arrived in our classroom. She was big. I remember thinking this kid belongs in 8th Grade. When the teacher asked her to stand up and tell everyone who she was and where she was from remains one of those memories forever burned in my brain visually as well as audibly. I had never heard a thick southern accent before. The twang left all our little mouths hanging open as she spoke:
My name is Benita Grimsley, that is B E N I T A, but it sounded more like she was saying “Bay A N I T AYYY” Years later while watching the movie Nell starring Jodi Foster I was reminded of that strange sounding voice echoing my name in the classroom. The high ceiling and hardwood floor must have added a whole new dimension to the sound I was hearing. I was flabbergasted. My heart was pounding. Would the mean boys tease her about that accent and her “weird” name and then would I become a source of ridicule by name association? Thank goodness Benita G. found friends and quickly absorbed herself into the background of grammar school society.
Okay, so I grow up. I have to spend my life spelling my name for people. People start making assumptions about me before they know me. Most of them think I am going to be Hispanic before they see me. Over the years, so many people have said “oh, I knew a Benita” as if it were a species. Then there are always the damn “fish” jokes since there is a fish with the name Bonita and the awful “Benita Banana” which rhymes so well with Chiquita Banana. And even now, my name causes someone to make a comment. A guy who belongs to the same Temple keeps calling me “Benita Applebaum” whoever the hell that is. So I never liked my name. As a matter of fact I have often hated it. I always managed to blame my mom. After all, she’s the one who named me. I did not even think of it as a “name” at times, just a bad label like a warning on cigarettes, Something like “The Surgeon General has found being called Benita may cause embarrassment, and social discomfort.”
Flash Forward 40 + years. I am taking care of my mother in so many ways. I moved her into a “retirement” community and am constantly going there to do her laundry and get her mail and take her to the doctor. It becomes overwhelming since she insisted on living in the one “retirement” community close to our old neighborhood and I have been forced to move to the far Northwest Suburbs where we can actually afford a home bigger than a breadbox. So back and forth, back and forth, back and forth I drove with babies in car seats, and bags of junk food on the front seat to sustain me during the long trips until one day when my mother tells me she can no longer “help” meaning instruct and boss around, her two special needs nephews, my first cousins. No one else in the family is able to help them. In our family they were always known as “The Boys” even as they crept through their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s never fully developing into MEN. Oh, physically they were bigger than most men, but emotionally, mentally, and in all other ways they would remain children. So now my mom wants me to be like that character in the “Incredibles” where I stretch my long arms from one side of the needy family all the way around to the other. I had to insist my mother hire a “caregiver” to help her if she wanted me to help “The Boys.” And she agreed.
Her building was filled with women from the Philippines who were working as care givers for residents, some came and went, and a few actually lived there. One day I got in the elevator, turned to the first caregiver I saw and said, do you know anyone who needs work? No problem. The network these women have established would put any United States Government Jobs program to shame. Within 24 hours I was waiting in the Lobby of Lincolnwood Place to meet the woman who was going to change my life.
It was too good to be true. When I asked her for her full name, address and phone number so I could know how to write out the checks I almost fell over laughing. She handed me her drivers license and it said “Bonita”. I looked at her and said “we have the same name” the difference of the one letter no longer seemed important. My mother was replacing one Benita with another. What were the chances after spending a lifetime looking for people who had the same name as I did, I found one and she is helping me take care of my mother, the woman who gave me this name. Was it a coincidence or the Celestine Prophecy at work?? “I like to be called Bonnie” she said after I wrote all the information down. “Of course you do” I said and smiled as we strolled to the elevator together so my mom could meet her new “Bonita.”
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