Jordan I named when I was 17 years old, even though she wouldn’t be born for another 10 years.
I was watching David Letterman, and one of his audience members had a question. Her name was Jordan and, in 1985, Jordan was unusual for a girl’s name. I remember Letterman doing a double-take then complimenting the woman on her name before taking the question. Then, a few nights later on the nightly news, the country Jordan was spotlighted for whatever reason, and I held onto that name until the day my first child was born.
Her middle name is Arianna, named after Arianna Huffington who, though now of Huffington Post and Prius-driving fame, caught my attention when her husband was running for the senate from California then revealed himself to be bisexual and all kinds of unrelated shenanigans, and I thought Arianna handled what was happening to her marriage before her eyes with strength and dignity. Jordan Arianna.
Jon Alex has a nickname squished together from his two middle names Jonathan and Alexander. Jonathan is what my sister’s name would have been had she been a boy (my mother had no alternative in case she was having a girl, so my grandmother was happy to name this one, too) and Alexander is the masculine form of Alexandra, another one of my mom’s favorite names. I decided on Jonathan Alexander to try to soothe my mother who was irate and embarrassed that I was giving birth to a second child without being married. Like I was living her life or something. And like she was the one having to raise the kids by herself after making yet another bad relationship decision. Did my homage to her two favorite names have any calming effect on her at all, you ask? Not an ounce. She is a mother, you know.
Why Jon Alex’s first name is Evan and how Ehren got his name in the next post. This writing exercise is way better than the mountain of absolutely necessary mountain of laundry I should be doing. If I must be domestic this weekend instead of my original plan of sailing around the world with a Greek shipping magnate, I might as well write about it.
