We had such a hard time naming Tessa. It was hard enough picking out Phoebe. Will people be able to spell it (sometimes), will people be able to pronounce it (often not), will she grow up hating it, and therefore us, because of it? (I doubt it) Besides when it came down to it, she just looked like a Phoebe. Now Tessa came to us with a name already. I had a slew of over-analyzations, regarding her birth history. Would she long for the name that was the only thing her birthmother ever gave her? Did the name have meaning to her or was it just one that came to mind? I actually really liked the name she was given at birth but there were practicality issues, like family members rhyming. I also felt that if we were going to become her parents did we not deserve the privilege of choosing her name? It was a struggle that resurfaced often during the eight months we waited to find out if we were even going to be considered to adopt her. When we found out we could, we decided that yes, we would choose a new name for her. She was still an infant and would probably adjust with no problem. So we debated and flip flopped, and I even told the attorney's office that her name would be Delaney, a combination of letters from her birth names that I thought would somehow make up for removing the name from her completely. That just didn't sit well with us and a few days later I called them back and we changed it to Tessa. It just fit. I was pretty sure the spelling and pronunciation problems were solved, but the final question, would she grow up hating us for it? We'll see. It was several months after the adoption and the name change that I Googled it to see if there were any famous Tessa's out there. The website http://www.tessa.org/ came up and my curiosity was piqued. When I clicked on it and saw the name The Texas Severe Storms Association I knew it was meant to be! We often call her Hurricane Tessa, because nothing can stop her, and she leaves a wake of destruction in her path.
So I was thinking about my yin and my yang and all the ways they have proven to be opposites thus far. Tessa is a ball of energy that never slows down. You just know that if she's awake she's moving, probably through a bunch of stuff you don't want her to. I was trying to decide if there were any natural disasters that compared to Phoebe in a similar way. After a debate with my friend Heather over which is worse, California's earthquakes or Texas' tornadoes/hurricanes, I decided that Phoebe is like an earthquake. She is quiet and sedate most of the time, with little rumblings that are just under the surface and no one notices until BOOM! everything is chaos. Then just as quickly life returns to normal and you forget about the danger that is there, just under the surface. Like when she gets sick (all of February this year, yippee) she couldn't call out "Mama my tummy hurts" like Tessa did, thereby allowing us an opportunity to be prepared. She woke up in the middle of the night and threw up all over her bed, jarring us from peaceful sleep only to find that the chaos was already over and now we just had to clean up after it. 6.3 on the Richter scale. Or the times she has surprised a caregiver with a "love bite" in the arm. 4.8 Or the time she jumped off the couch hitting her head on the coffee table giving herself a concussion. 7.5 My argument with Heather was that at least a Hurricane or Tornado has some warning. Initially you know that there is a storm coming, and then as it gets closer they tell you to be on "watch", then if you are in serious danger there are sirens and you know to hide in the bathroom and hold on! Earthquakes go years in between without a disastrous one, but when it hits it could be "the big one". After years of living with both types of disasters, the literal and figurative ones, I call a tie.
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