Polly, Proliferating

I had more or less gotten over the fact that I was not Joan of Arc, riding boldly on a horse smack into battle, when I discovered that my name—something that I had heretofore thought had distinguished me, at least slightly—was suddenly turning up all over the place. We aren’t exactly a field of dandelions, but my quality of Polly-ness, just as of this past week, has put me in a whole bouquet of other females. This has taken some getting used to, but I’m now feeling some palpable gains.

It all started a week or so ago, when one of my blog readers wrote with a request that I participate in something called a “blog-hop.” You’ll hear about this in my next post; for the time being, what’s most important is that the name of this reader (and fellow blogger, it turns out) is Polly. Now, I’m really not so self-aggrandizing to think I’m the only one out there bearing my name who has anything to say; still, the email gave me a bit of a start and, momentarily at least, made me wonder if I was looking in the mirror.

To backtrack a bit, I was named after my aunt—my father’s older sister. Her real name was Mary, like her mother, but she was always called Polly (I’ve never understood this; then again, I don’t understand lots of things that used to happen or, for that matter, things that are still happening). My parents were going to do follow suit with me, but someone wisely said, “If you’re going to call her Polly, why don’t you just name her Polly?” And so it was. My aunt, and this may sound familiar since I’ve written about her in a past post, was a remarkable woman. Besides being a microbiologist and then a college president who advanced women’s education at the same time that she was a single parent of a bunch of teenagers, she rode horses bareback, kept bees, and hardly flinched at anything. Needless to say, I have always been mighty proud to be her niece, and – kind of like a bonus—to bear her name.

During all my school years, I honestly can’t remember meeting a single other Polly. Even in adulthood, anyone with my name (see how possessive I am?) has crossed my screen only very rarely. Speaking of screen, I might as well mention this actress: Jennifer Aniston, you may recall, played the free-spirited woman opposite Ben Stiller in that 2004 romantic comedy called Along Came Polly. One of these days I really need to see this movie.

It was that email from the blogger, however, that seemed to open the way a whole new street; in Monopoly, we’d call it Polly Place. Or perhaps it was the Polly Parade.

I went to a travel office to arrange my daughter’s plane ticket to Cameroon for her fall semester abroad; there were a number of agents available, but it was an easy choice when I saw the names on the desks. As soon as I met her, I knew that we would become friends. I loved how she got right to work, fingers flying as she studied the information on that computer, squinting slightly, and I loved how she instinctively seemed to know how important it was that my 20 year old daughter be well-cared for in the skies. She was a pro, no doubt about that. I also loved how she freely acknowledged that this was a new destination, even for her. When she went over the details of the tickets with me, she said, “ She’ll arrive at 7:30 p.m. at Can’t-Pronounce-It.”  The place is new to me too, but here goes: Nsimalen Airport in the city of Yaounde, capital city of Cameroon.

(Yes, as you might be thinking, the fact that our girl will be going to West Africa at this particular time–in a month–gives us pause. All things considered, however, we have confidence in the highly regarded program administered by the School for International Training; she will be miles away from the perils we hear about in the news; her courses will help fulfill her French/Anthropology major; and she claims that the prospect of Europe leaves her cold).

During the course of our work together, Polly and I chatted about this and that. It didn’t take me long to learn one her favorite expressions: when she describes any woman – maybe her, maybe me– who has to overcome some anxiety and push forward, she says the woman needs to “put on her big girl pants.” What a riot.

Afterwards, in swift succession, two things happened: our family received a dinner invitation from neighbors who have a daughter named Polly, and then I learned from the book I’m reading—My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead– that the novelist George Eliot’s loving husband, George Henry Lewes, gave her a nickname:

Lewes adored Eliot, whom he called by the pet name of Polly, with an intuitive kindness and a gratitude in which there was no trace of resentment. (p. 178)

While I have never considered my name to be of the “pet” variety, I can’t help but be pleased to be linked in any way with this author, whose understanding of human nature was nothing short of stupendous.

So, say I generously, come on along, all you other Pollys! There’s room for you! I will just keep on doing what I’m doing, in my own particular Polly way, just like the wren outside our kitchen window keeps on singing. As the poet Edward Hirsch is quoted as saying in the new profile written by Alec Wilkinson in this week’s The New Yorker, “Your job is to write about the life you actually have.” (p.51)