My son’s girlfriend, Sarah, announced during brunch that if their baby was a girl, she was set on naming her “Lily,” after her ex-boyfriend’s beloved dog. My son, Mark, just sat there, fork halfway to his mouth, absolutely speechless. I immediately told her that was a ridiculous idea. But then her next suggestion truly left me aghast. She paused, a smirk playing on her lips, and said, “Well, what about …
The Brunch That Went Sideways Before the Food Even Arrived
I should back up.
This was a Sunday. Early March, still cold enough that the windows in my kitchen were fogged at the edges. I’d made a full spread: eggs, toast, the good bacon from the butcher on Clement Street, fresh orange juice because I was trying to make an effort. Mark had called the night before to say Sarah wanted to “connect” with me, and I’d taken that as a signal to put in some work.
Sarah is twenty-six. Mark is twenty-nine. They’d been together fourteen months when she got pregnant, which is not a long time, but it’s not nothing either. I’d met her maybe six times before this brunch. She’s pretty in that way where she clearly knows it, with long dark hair and the kind of posture that comes from someone who’s spent time being looked at. She’s not unkind. She just has an energy I can’t quite place, like she’s always half-waiting for the room to disappoint her.
Mark is my only kid. His father, Ray, died when Mark was seventeen, so it’s been the two of us for a long time. I’m not a hovering mother. I want to say that clearly. I don’t call more than once a week. I don’t show up unannounced. I stayed in my lane even when I thought Sarah was wrong for him, which I did think, briefly, in the beginning. But he seemed happy, and she seemed to settle him in ways I couldn’t, and then she was pregnant, and that was that.
So. The brunch.
“Lily. After His Dog.”
They arrived fifteen minutes late, which didn’t bother me. Sarah had that glow people talk about, genuinely, the kind that’s not just a saying. She looked well. I hugged her, poured her decaf, asked about the nausea. Normal stuff. We sat down. I passed the eggs.
The conversation was fine for maybe twelve minutes. Work stuff, apartment stuff, whether they were staying in the city after the baby came. Mark was relaxed in a way I don’t always see him, arm draped over Sarah’s chair, laughing at something she said about their neighbor.
Then Sarah put her fork down.
“We’ve been talking about names,” she said. Not to Mark specifically. To me. Like she was delivering a presentation.
I said that was exciting.
“If it’s a boy, we’re thinking James,” she said. “Which I know is Mark’s grandfather’s name, so that felt right.”
I told her that was lovely. And it was. Ray’s father was James, and he’d have been tickled.
“But if it’s a girl,” she said, and she smiled this particular smile, “I really love Lily.”
I said that was a sweet name.
“It’s after Beau’s dog,” she said. Casual. Like she was telling me the eggs were good.
Beau, I would learn in the next thirty seconds, was her ex-boyfriend of three years. They’d broken up about eight months before she met Mark. Beau had a golden retriever named Lily who had apparently been, in Sarah’s words, “the most special creature I’ve ever known.”
Mark’s fork was frozen in the air. Not moving. Just suspended there, a piece of egg on the tines, going cold.
I looked at him. He looked at his plate.
I said, and I kept my voice even, “Sarah, honey, you can’t name a baby after your ex’s dog.”
She tilted her head. “Why not? It’s a beautiful name.”
“The name is beautiful,” I said. “The reason is not.”
She blinked. “I don’t see why the reason matters if the name is nice.”
And that’s when I said it was a ridiculous idea. Not my most elegant moment. But I stand by the substance of it.
What She Said Next
She didn’t get upset. That’s the thing. She didn’t flinch or tear up or get defensive. She just paused, did this little almost-smile, and said: “Well, what about Beau?”
For a girl.
Beau.
The ex-boyfriend’s name. For their daughter.
“It works for a girl,” she said, perfectly pleasantly. “It’s French, technically. It’s becoming more common for girls. And I’ve always loved it.”
I put my fork down. I looked at Mark. Mark was looking at the table like it might open up and swallow him, which honestly I understood.
“Beau,” I said. “You want to name Mark’s daughter after the man you dated before Mark.”
“I want to name our daughter a name I love,” she said. “Beau is a name I love.”
“Because of a person named Beau.”
“Names don’t belong to people.”
I genuinely did not know what to do with that sentence.
Mark Says Nothing. Which Is Its Own Problem.
Here’s the thing about my son. He’s a good man. He’s steady, he’s kind, he works hard, he was raised right, I’m allowed to say that. But he has this particular failure mode where conflict makes him go very still and very quiet and he just waits for the weather to change. Ray was the same way. I used to call it the “statue setting.” Some switch flips and he just stops.
He was fully in statue mode.
I said, “Mark, are you going to weigh in?”
He said, “We’re still just talking about options.”
Sarah nodded like this was a complete answer.
I said, “Does the name Beau mean something to you? As a name for your child?”
He said, “I mean, it’s not my first choice.”
Sarah said, “We haven’t agreed on anything yet. This is just a conversation.”
And I could see what was happening. This wasn’t really about names. Or it wasn’t only about names. Sarah was doing something, and I couldn’t quite read whether it was careless or deliberate, and I think that’s what got under my skin more than anything. The not knowing. Whether she was genuinely this oblivious to how it landed, or whether she knew exactly how it landed and didn’t care, or whether, and this is the one that kept me up that night, she was doing it on purpose for reasons I couldn’t see yet.
After They Left
They stayed another forty minutes. We talked about the apartment, the due date, whether they wanted to find out the sex. Normal stuff again. Sarah ate two pieces of toast and seemed perfectly happy. Mark helped me clear the plates. When they left, he hugged me at the door and said, quietly, “Don’t worry about it.”
I said, “I’m not worried. I’m confused.”
He said, “She’s just kind of like that.”
“Like what, exactly?”
He didn’t answer. He kissed my cheek and went down the stairs.
I stood in the kitchen for a while after. The bacon pan still on the stove. The orange juice half-finished. I kept turning it over. Lily after the dog. Then Beau after the man. The smirk that wasn’t quite a smirk, the smile that wasn’t quite a smile, the way she’d looked at me when she said names don’t belong to people, like she was waiting to see what I’d do.
I called my friend Donna that night. Donna has three kids and two ex-daughters-in-law and has seen most things. I told her the whole story.
She was quiet for a second.
Then she said, “Either she’s testing you or she’s testing him. Maybe both.”
I asked what I was supposed to do with that.
Donna said, “Nothing yet. Watch.”
Two Weeks Later
Mark called on a Tuesday. Said they’d found out the sex.
A girl.
I congratulated him. He sounded genuinely happy, the real kind, not the performed kind. We talked for a while about it, about Ray, about how much he would have loved this. Mark cried a little. I cried a little. It was a good call.
Before we hung up, I asked, carefully, whether they’d made any decisions about names.
He was quiet for a second.
Then he said, “She’s come around on James for a middle name. If we use a family name in the middle, she gets more latitude on the first name. That was kind of the deal.”
I asked what the first name was.
He said, “Lily.”
Not Beau. Lily.
I sat with that.
It’s a beautiful name. It is. On its own, completely separated from whatever dog, whatever ex, whatever history Sarah carries around with her, it’s a genuinely lovely name for a girl. And maybe that’s the thing I have to make my peace with. That a name can come from a strange place and still be the right name. That I don’t get to know all of Sarah’s reasons for anything, and maybe that’s fine. Maybe that’s not mine to know.
Or maybe Donna’s right and I should just watch.
The baby is due in August. Her name will be Lily James, which sounds like an actress from a film I’d actually watch. Mark sounds happy when he talks about her. Sarah texted me last week, unprompted, a photo of the first ultrasound where you can actually see a face, and she wrote: she has Mark’s nose already, I think.
I looked at that photo for a long time.
Little Lily. Nose like her father. Named after a dog, or named after a name that someone loved for whatever reason people love things, which is sometimes no reason at all.
I don’t know what Sarah is. I don’t know if she’s careless or clever or just someone who says whatever’s in her head without editing it first. I don’t know if the smirk was a smirk or just her face. I don’t know if Mark is happy or just quiet.
But I know that girl in the ultrasound is going to be someone I love before she even gets here.
And I know I’m going to have to figure out how to sit across a brunch table from her mother for the rest of my life.
So.
I’m practicing.
—
If this felt familiar in any way, pass it along to someone who’d get it.
For more family drama, discover why one husband was told not to look at his newborns or read about the person who flipped a coffee table at their sister-in-law’s baby shower. If you’re into mysteries, you might enjoy learning about the secret that died with one woman’s uncle.
