Virtuosity, Heritage, and Completion

“What if we have a girl?” I can imagine my mom asking my dad in their one-room apartment with cardboard boxes stacked high along the walls. She was seven months pregnant with me and in the middle of the moving process before they seriously discussed the genetic possibilities of a female child. They had already chosen the name Benjamin Wayne Yost and had consistently called me “Benjamin” for several months of the pregnancy.
My parents at least agreed that they favored virtuous names.

“Honey, what do you think about the name Charity? That’s the main character in this book.”

A romance novel with a questionable cover dangled from my mother’s hand. Thoughts raced through Daddy’s mind that this name might not be as virtuous as he hoped if it was inspired by the paperback book she was holding. Beneath dark brows, his hazel eyes showed disapproval.

“The girl in the book is a strong character! She’s what we’d want our daughter to be – mature, caring, level-headed, smart…. She even has brown hair and eyes. It’s a sign!” my mom concluded, nodding and grinning.

She lifted herself and the cumbersome weight of pregnancy up from the mid-eighties, golden-upholstered couch and reached for the King James Version Bible on the coffee table. The leather cover was badly wrinkled from a careless mishap with scalding hot coffee. The pages were folded and wrinkled. Still, the Scripture held more cherished highlights and scribbles than the romance novel in her other hand.

“I’m telling you, it means good things,” my mom continued while Daddy contemplated in silence, glancing over the top of his issue of Georgia Outdoor World magazine.

Mama flipped through her Bible’s thin pages to First Corinthians 13 and began to read about the true virtue of charity. Daddy’s forehead lost its doubt wrinkles when she read phrases like “doth not behave itself unseemingly” and “thinketh no evil.”

The wrinkles on his forehead smoothed as fears about the woman on the other cover began to disappear, and the image of a well-behaved little girl emerged.

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity,” Mama ended the chapter.

“Charity,” he said, trying the word out for sound. “Charity…. Hmph… I like that.” Conversation halted in a happy pause of silent agreement.

Marie seemed to be the obvious choice for a middle name. It was made popular in my mom’s family by Gladys Marie Sherrill, my spry great-grandmother, who danced around the house, singing and twirling her skirts while dinner was cooking. My mom’s eccentric sister Cindi also shared a variation of the name. “Cynthia Maria Weaver” was typed on her birth certificate by accident though my grandmother had originally chosen Cynthia Marie. My mother might have been trying to redeem that mistake, or she might have simply enjoyed the dramatic stories her older sister told when they were children.

“Charity Marie Yost,” they said in unison. Adding the German surname made it complete. After seven months, they were finally satisfied.