A Boy Named Robert

My husband Nathan was a month shy of his second birthday when his father dropped dead of a myocardial infarction at the faculty Christmas dance. Nathan’s mother, Marjorie, was home with 23-month-old Nathan, three-year-old Sandra, and 15-year-old Jackson, her son from her first marriage, when the high school principal, where her husband Robert was a teacher, called with the news.

When Marjorie married Robert Litman, the promise of a long and exhilaratingly happy future was all she could think about. His untimely death was a tragedy it’s fair to say she has never gotten over despite a third marriage and a fourth child.

Robert, or Bob as he is most often referred, is considered by the family to be a saint. “If only Bob hadn’t died,” is an oft-repeated family lament. It seems that everything that went wrong afterwards would never have happened if Bob hadn’t died. For instance, “If Bob had lived, Jackson would never have dropped out of high school.”

Bob’s California siblings called him Bobby. In turns they would often repeat: “Bobby was the most giving person you’d ever met.” “Bobby could fix anything and he’d do anything for you.” “If Bobby had lived, Uncle Lou would never have married that awful woman and sold the family homestead.” If the family were Catholic, they would have long ago appealed to the Pope to have Bob canonized for they tell of at least three miracles he performed during his short lifetime.

When it came to picking out a boy name for our first child, however, I could not reconcile myself to naming him Robert. A boy named Robert is never called Robert. He is called Rob, Robbie, Bob, or Bobby. Though I was somewhat concerned about a son having to grow up in the shadow of his grandfather’s ever-expanding sainthood knowing the inevitable comparisons would undoubtedly be made, what I was really worried about was that just about every boy I had dated before my marriage was named some version of Robert.

• First there was Rob Frasier. Rob wasn’t really a boyfriend. He had a crush on me in sixth grade. He’d chase me around our elementary school playground singing The Doors’ C’mon Baby Light My Fire. With his arms outstretched like the amorous Pepi Le Peu, Rob terrorized me nearly every day in an attempt to capture and kiss me. In eighth grade I finally agreed to go to his church-sponsored hayride with him. He was a member of a Christian Science church and I remember great debate in my family about whether to let me go or not. “They don’t believe in doctors,” my mother said. I couldn’t understand her objection. After all, it was just a hayride and hardly constituted, nor did I expect it to turn into, a marriage proposal. There was no need to set dates for a wedding as the hayride was the extent of our going out. 

• Bob Smithson never actually was interested me. But, I had a wild crush on him during ninth grade. My girlfriends thought him to be a perfect match for me. They encouraged my interest and made every attempt to throw us together. But, he preferred girls with large breasts, and this was an attribute I would never possess. 

• Then there was Bobby Dolzel. We had been friends since first grade and ever so briefly—two months in all—were girlfriend and boyfriend during our sophomore year of high school. But Bobby had another girlfriend lurking about—one who went to a private school and was rarely home. The day he fessed up, he proposed that I be his girlfriend during the week at school, and that the other girl could remain his weekend and summer squeeze. He had guts, I have to admit, but I turned down his offer. 

• There was another short-lived flirtation with a Robbie during my early college years. The attraction, now that I ponder it, is a bit of a mystery. I think maybe he was funny in that he had a great sense of humor. But all I really remember is that he was decidedly over weight, and we mostly sat around his apartment with at least another couple of people smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. 

Heaven forbid that one of these Roberts might one day find out and assume I had named a son after one of them.

After firmly resisting Nathan’s (and I suspect his mother’s) desire to further honor the sainted Robert Litman by anointing a grandson with his moniker, we finally settled on Alexander as our boy name for our first child. The arrival of our daughter, however, rendered further debate over a boy’s name completely unnecessary. And when our second child was expected, Nathan made no effort at all to insist on Robert again. By that point, he, too, understood the pathological attachment his family had formed for the name and was not interested in burdening a son with such an unreasonable and fantastical legacy.

Copyright DJ Anderson 2012