Today, Mom and I were talking about how several of Kimberly's friends call her "Kim." This REALLY gets under Mom's skin. Growing up, NOBODY, was allowed to call her Kim....Mom would say, I didn't name her Kim, I named her Kimberly." Kimberly is a lot more lax about it than Mom is (especially after getting married) and occasionally, we do hear friends of hers calling her "Kim" and all eyes instantly go to Mom, who's giving Kimberly, "the look."
For me, Everybody calls me "Nat." In fact, very seldom these days do I hear, "Natalie" and when I do, I always wonder if I'm in trouble. Everyone asks why I can be called Nat, but Kimberly can't be called Kim. We always smile as we share that story.
Being born two and a half months early, I was very tiny (not even two pounds) and very sick. My Grandpa (aka Pop) called the day after I was born to check on me and the first words out of his mouth to my Mom were "How's that Nat?" and it stuck. We tell everyone Pop gave me the nickname. And 99 percent of the people I know, call me that.
As we talked about it, I smiled, and blinked back tears as I thought about how cool it will be if those are the first words out of my Pop's mouth when he greets me in Heaven one day...."How's that Nat?" My answer will probably be muffled as the two of us cling to each other in an incredible hug, but my answer nonetheless will be, "Now....I'm perfect, Pop!"
No comments:
Post a Comment