FAQ

Q: How did you come up with the name Kai? Is that a family name?

A: No, Kai (k-eye) is not a family name.

I first heard the name Kai in high school when studying poets in an English class. I was drawn to Gary Snyder, the often-classified Beat poet and Pulitzer Prize winner, for his interests in Zen and nature and for his direct, observational work. Snyder named his oldest son Kai, and I instantly loved that name. Short but very strong. A clean and rather simple sound. A look that’s a bit exotic. And Kai was born in 1968, just like me. Snyder wrote a number of poems mentioning Kai, but this one I now appreciate fully:

Not Leaving the House

When Kai is born
I quit going out

Hang around the kitchen – make cornbread
Let nobody in.
Mail is flat.
Masa lies on her side, Kai sighs,
Non washes and sweeps
We sit and watch
Masa nurse, and drink green tea.

Navajo turquoise beads over the bed
A peacock tail feather at the head
A badger pelt from Nagano-ken
For a mattress; under the sheet;
A pot of yogurt setting
Under the blankets, at his feet.

Masa, Kai,
And Non, our friend
In the garden light reflected in
Not leaving the house.
From dawn till late at night
making a new world of ourselves
around this life.

I filed the name Kai away in my brain and scribbled it on the mandatory list of baby names that every high school girl keeps in a grubby notebook.

Cut to my freshman year of college. One of the deans of the college had named his son Kai, and this Kai lived in a room across the hall from my room. My love of the name floated up from my literary and high school memories; it was cool that I had met a Kai in the real world.

Cut to the months of my pregnancy. R and I made out separate lists of baby names and adjusted them over the trimesters. I read from my grubby old list and added new names to make my master list. We both looked through baby name books (thank you, Karin and Jamie!!). And at the beginning of October we had a "name powwow" and came up with what to take to the hospital. We didn’t know the sex of the baby, so we agreed on both boy and girl names. We actually had just one girl name, but I was quite certain that we wouldn’t need it. (For most of my pregnancy I felt that the baby was a boy.)

We decided on three boy names and ranked them in a loose order. Desmond was at the top (and I had thought of the baby as Desmond through the whole pregnancy, although we called the baby "Crumbcake" as a working title). Kai was a close second, and Maxfield was next. R insisted that we needed to see the baby first before picking a name, and a number of my other friends agreed. A few friends even told me that they had switched their name picks completely once seeing their baby. I was skeptical and really thought that Desmond was it, but I was willing to be open about it and see the kid first.

Cut to me on Halloween (no pun intended), flat on my back in the OR getting an unexpected C-section. (ARGH!! Don’t ask!) The anesthesiologist put up a mirror for me to see my baby making its way into the world. I saw the head of dark hair and little guy face and knew it was a boy before the surgeon even said the words. Then, in what seemed like the next instant, R was holding my son by my side. I looked into the baby’s eyes and knew right then that he was not a Desmond at all. He was a Kai.

In my hospital room after the birth, R and I spent hours with our son, and a few times every hour we would say to each other, "He just isn’t a Desmond, really, is he? He’s a Kai." I had thought of my son as Desmond for so long and we so liked the name that we agreed to use it as his middle name. Then we put my father’s name next (Ralph), my father being the cool guy that he is. So after letting his full name gel, knowing we had it right, we filled out the hospital paperwork and told family and friends that we had welcomed Kai into the world.

We love the name Kai for the reasons I mentioned previously but also for what the name means in different languages: As we understand it, after reading through many sources and books:

* Kai is Hawaiian (perhaps also Japanese) for "ocean" or "moving sea": This is perfect for him because he never stopped moving inside me during his 9 months. He bounced around during his ultrasounds and he rarely took a break from forcefully pushing me. The skin on my midsection undulated day in and day out.

* Kai is Navajo for "willow tree": A great-great grandmother of R’s was Native American, and I am a bit of a tree-hugging hippie.

* Kai is Scandinavian for "earth": R’s mother’s father had Scandinavian roots, and "earth" is just cool as a meaning. Total nature.

* Kai is Japanese for many things, apparently, but it can represent ideas like "forgiveness" and "to amend" or "reform" (in Chinese, potentially "change"): Kai arrived right when he was meant to. He has made me whole.

I do not talk religion or politics or any of those sensitive and personal subjects in this blog typically. But I have been thinking about present moment and spirituality and religion and church quite a bit recently, having just experienced what I found to be a perfect miracle (cliché, perhaps, but creating life is often described this way), which brought me much closer to the spiritual aspects (and perhaps religious as well) of me that had been dormant, waiting for some event like Kai's 9 months and arrival to help them bloom again.

I am Methodist. I don't attend my church regularly, but I do belong, and that adds to my identity. I will always be Methodist despite the fact that I will be changing membership to my husband's Presbyterian church and, at some point next year, actually attending on a regular basis. I will be changing for a number of reasons -- family, community, proximity. I'll probably end up joining the choir eventually as well. A good Methodist loves to sing. Of course, Kai won't be without his eastern philosophy and zen lessons outside that time at church, but the church will be good too.

I remember when I was very young, perhaps 7, and it was either the Sunday before Easter or Easter Sunday ... in any case, I was in Sunday School that spring morning, playing with some blocks or using some activity toys, waiting for when we would be making drawings and cotton fuzzy replicas of Easter chicks and bunnies (or some similar cool art project) with the teacher. For whatever reason I fell into an anxiety attack and wanted to go home immediately. My father was called to fetch me (I assume he was attending the church service downstairs, but as he is agnostic and often did not go, he could have been at home just sitting down to hot coffee), and he arrived, and he drove me the 5 minutes back to our house. And then, when we settled at home, I became upset again, and I explained that now that I was home I would be missing making the bunnies and chicks and I was very sad about this. And my father, the awesome guy he is, asked if I wanted to go back, and I did, so we got back in the car and he took me back, and the teacher was happy to see me again and I made my art.

I told my mother this story for the first time about 7 months ago as we drove together across the county, my flat palm on my growing belly. I told her that this is the parent I want to be, the one who will gently gather her child from anxiety and gently place the child back after regret, the one who won't argue or force or chastise when the situation calls for a parent who can flex and listen and help. I smile now thinking that my dad was probably sighing at having to drive back and forth, but I didn't know it. Perhaps this is something I cannot express well in words, but I know how my dad made me feel then, and I'll work for that too.

To close, I will just mention that I read Cary Tennis every day. He's rather cool. This is a recent paragraph of his that made me smile:

"Of all human activities that we could possibly engage in, church is one of the least interesting. Truly. Admit it. It is dull. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But it isn't as fun as surfing. It's no round of minigolf. As opposed to, say, sex and love, or childbirth, or cooking and eating, or travel, or having a good laugh, or gardening, going to church is dull. It's necessary for human order and provides solace to troubled minds and keeps people off the streets and encourages them to dress up and read aloud. There is often singing, which is also good. But the reason for church is that we are troubled, and we are going to die. So it's not really as much fun as the mall. We are here now and we have money; that is the forward-thinking proposition on which the existence of malls is based. Think about it: On the one hand you have the proposition that we are all going to die, along with what will happen to us afterward and what will we do about all the evil in the world. On the other you have the proposition that we are all here right now and we have some money and there is a little place down the road called MiniGolf."

As a work-at-home mom who doesn't have an option but to work, I find that this post at At Home Mom Blog is oh-so true ...

Welcome Kai Desmond Ralph Maffei

Halloween 2008

9 lb. 2 oz.