Nuns and namesakes

My legal first name is the same as that of my grandmother, my mom’s mom.

Who absolutely hated the name, and refused to be called by it at all, to the point where even most of her legal paperwork from her job and such had her first initial followed by her middle name (that she actually went by).

Why would you then chose to pass that name on? Well, that’s one of those things that really only makes sense in a crazy family like mine I think. Let’s just say that I’ve always been called by one nickname or another. LOL

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My middle name has always seemed to make equally as much sense. I was named after a nun.

Which seems somewhat logical if I were catholic. Or for that matter, if I had grown up in a family that was religious at all.

Neither being the case, it always seemed like a really random grab… to randomly name a kid after a nun that works with your mother at a hospital.

The best answer to that I’ve ever gotten was just “she was a really nice person”.

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We lived in the small town where she worked, about an hours drive away from here, from when I was a few weeks or months old until I was 3. So I have absolutely no memory of having met her.

But the stuffed dog that was my prized possession as a child… that slept on my bed until college… that I still actually own to this day… was a gift from her.

And at some point, my mom gave me an old manilla envelope containing a copy of a speech that she gave at a pilots club meeting when I would have been 2 at the time… that she had given my mother to give to me someday. It’s about seeing the mystery of God’s creation in each other, and viewing each other as someone treasured by God.

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The other day, a friend of mine asked a question on facebook, which was answered by another member of our church giving her a link to a retreat class at one of the two retreat centers that the church uses (or used… not positive on this particular one).

Randomly, I decided to click over and look at it… and while it wasn’t really something I’d have been interested in, there was another one listed that actually looked like it would be interesting on family of origin issues. There’s a couple reasons why it wouldn’t work out to go to it… including financial and the fact that it falls in the middle of kiddo’s spring break… but it was enough to get me clicking around on the site.

And I ended up on their spiritual guides page… and sort of scrolled through the list….

And in the middle of this list…. was someone listed as “sister” with the same first and middle name as the nun I was named after. a not too common combination, but not impossible to be someone else.

I sent a text to my mom asking if the last name matched… only to get into a really random debate as to whether nuns have last names or not!

So I actually googled the name as it was listed on the retreat center’s page, and pulled up a second page for the location that the first page had said that she was based out of… actually about 2 miles from where I live.

The second page had a picture… and mentioned in the description that she formerly worked in hospitals.

And so mom is convinced that it’s her by the picture… even though the last time that she saw her either has probably been at the very least 2 decades ago.

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The second page also had an email address. (Both pages had phone numbers.)

One, it seems so unusual to me that someone who worked with my grandma does email while my grandma never really understood how to use a VCR. (But then, the speech is typed even when it dates back to the 80’s, which I’m not sure my grandma could have done either.. lol)

But second… it makes me consider contacting her.

Part of me feels like I should.

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But then, the other part of me hasn’t the foggiest idea what to say.

I mean, I haven’t had contact with her since I was 3… and I don’t even really know how well she knew the family or the extent of any friendship she had with my grandmother… who had moved away 5 years after we did.

And both of the two people who could probably answer those questions have already died.

Which also sort of reminds me that if I choose not to make contact with her now, it might not be an option later on in my life… if she worked with my grandma back then, she’s got to be at least 50 or so minimum, and I would guess by the pic that she would have been closer to my grandma’s age than that lowest number… so in her 60’s or even 70’s?

But then, I also don’t want to be bugging her… especially if the name choice was as random to her as it seemed to me later on in life.

Though, she is openly on two different lists as being willing to be contacted by people looking for guides in spiritual direction. Maybe I should go in that direction instead?

I dunno. I’m a bit baffled on how to write “Hi, I think you might be the nun I’m named after” in a way that seems less, well, random and weird.

Plus, I’m not really sure what exactly I’m wanting or expecting as a response from her if I did contact her.

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Somehow my life always finds new ways to be weird.