Samuel Benoit

It will always be easy for my family to remember when Julie and Fanfan announced to us that they were expecting. It was Father’s Day and Julie and Fanfan invited our parents over for dinner. As we were in the living room after dinner Julie announced that she and Fanfan had a Father’s Day gift and presented my father with a piece of paper that read “Happy Father’s Day”. My dad looked on the other side of the sheet to see if there was anything else, found nothing and said “ok?” Julie then said she forgot something, and ran back into the kitchen. Now you may think you would see what was coming a mile away, maybe that’s because of your scroll-happy fingers, just let the record show that none of us did. She came back again holding the same sheet, here comes the gift certificate, coupon or CD behind it, thought I. Julie gave just the same sheet back to my dad, he read aloud the pictured amendment.

The whole scene was then narrated to my grandmother over speaker phone. As my mother concluded that she was going to be a grandmother, she asked “And what does that make you, Baba?” “A great grandmother!” she cried.

I am earning a new title too, my proudest achievement ever, and without any effort on my part. This has got me thinking about this question of the names we give to different relations. I think it would be accurate to say that in the Western culture we have a name for every relation and for every relation a name. As we met people in the small town in Ghana I stayed in a couple years ago, my friend would introduce me to more and more people he identified as his brother, sister, uncle, aunt, or grandparent. It’s possible to have innumerable siblings and uncles and aunts, but after the fifth grandfather, I had to ask. I learned that the relationships are more fluid and it doesn’t really matter how someone is genetically related to you if they have been important in your life. Here in India, many different types of relations fall under the vague cousin-brother and cousin-sister category.

I got the call at 2 am yesterday morning that he had finally left the gooey world that he always knew into our world of light, air, gravity and clothing. I got a description of my nephew, and what stuck in my mind was that he currently has hair on his forehead and shoulders, making me picture a young indian I saw in the paper recently. Julie was in labour for about 22 hours, the last one of which involved some screaming. Benjamin William Seleger arrived in Ottawa at 2:01pm on February 12, 2008.

The disembodied voice of the brother in India was passed around the room to the the new parents and the old ones. I was brimming with questions when I was passed to Julie, “How many teeth does he have?”, “Is he left or right-handed?”, “What language does he speak?”, “What are his impressions of the outside world?”, “How high can he jump?” Julie grew inexplicably exhausted and passed me on. After finally hearing the sound of Benjamin’s voice, I agreed to let them go to let them call Baba. We said goodbye and I reluctantly put down the phone. The crickets outside my window and mosquito humming outside my net immediately flooded back into my ears to remind me where I am.