On Seeing, and Believing

We took Celia to campus yesterday.  She couldn't see her own sunset curls reflected in Mirror Lake, but she could hear the chiming of the bells.  She didn't watch as her brother raced across the Oval, but she could feel the bumpy bricks as the stroller tried to keep up.  She couldn't take in the grandeur of the new student Union, but we described to her, in detail, the way the tile is inlaid with block Os, the way the bronze Brutus has one finger in the air, a winning smile across his face.  She couldn't see, and as much as there was to look at, we couldn't take our eyes off of her.

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We named her Celia.  An alluring trio of syllables.

It's a family name, one with variations we fancied.  Celie Goose, among them.  And she was, not even for a year though, a silly little girl -- long enough for the nicknames to roll right off our tongues, but not nearly long enough.
We learned, once we searched its origins, that her name means "blind."  Oh, how sad would that be, to have a daughter who was blind, we'd said.  If only we could talk to those people now, the ones who hadn't yet grown parent hearts, who thought they knew what sad would be.
We decided to ignore the worrisome meaning behind the name, to give her the name that we loved, the one that ancestors carried before her.

She won't be named valedictorian, or captain of the debate team.  She'll never be pronounced Mrs., or called mama.  But she's been called some lovely things.  

We named her Celia.
Less often, some sources indicate that Celia means "heaven."  I believe it does.
JEB