A Remembrance of Things Past

Thirty years ago tomorrow morning, I was five months pregnant with my son, Jesse. My husband and I were awake early, which is par for the course in our lives. (My husband seems to believe that sleeping past seven is a sin.)

As now, our alarm clock was the radio. We lived in New Jersey then (long story) so we were tuned to WNEW in the city. We woke up with a John Lennon song playing.

Nice way to start the day.

This was followed by a second song.

Hmm, that's strange to play the same artist twice in a row.

Then a third Lennon song followed with the deejay breaking in to say that he planned to play Lennon all morning because of the tragic events of the evening before.

Jay and I were cuddled up together but our heads drew apart at this announcement and we stared at one another. No, not John.

Please.

Not John.

Four months later, as I struggled to wake up from anesthesia following the C-section birth of our son, someone (I think it was a nurse of some kind) came into my room with a clipboard in hand. "What are you going to name your son?" she asked.

Now Jay and I had had a long agreement that Jesse would be named Jesse because it was the only name we both liked. But we'd never settled on a middle name, selecting and rejecting several over the months of my pregnancy.

But in my daze, I knew there was only one name that fit. "Lennon," I said. And proceeded to spell it so the nurse wouldn't get it confused with Vladimir's last name. I think that children need names they can grow into.

Fast forward about 20 years and Jesse and I are in Ohio, checking out his selected college, Ohio University. We flew in and out of Cleveland Airport, the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

As good fortune would have it, the hall was host to a John Lennon retrospective. The building is shaped like a skewed pyramid, and the top two floors were filled with his guitars, a small bed from the Dakota apartment, and enlarged copies of his working drafts of such songs as Imagine, Mother, and others.

I'm fascinated by other creative people's working drafts. They give you a glimpse into how other people's heads work. I noticed there were only one or two changes in the whole of Imagine so I can assume that it sprang more or less whole from his head. Other songs, with lots of cross outs and changes, had obviously been more of a struggle.

My son, who sure knows his Mom, had gone off on his own but knew he would find me in that part of the building. For 20 years, Jesse had, like so many children, struggled to understand why he got saddled with his particular middle name. John Lennon was something Jesse just didn't get other than knowing his Mom really admired him. After all, how many Moms have huge posters of a rock musician on their studio walls like I do. (This picture is of my favorite poster of John and it's been a fixture in my studio for more than a decade.)

In a small theater off to one side, the museum had the movie Imagine on a tape loop and Jesse and I ducked in. The film is a montage of Lennon's life, well told. I could feel Jesse's focus, trying to understand something about this man and, by extension, his Mom.

We had to leave before the film finished in order to catch our plane but as we made our way out of the museum, imagine (that word again) my delight to hear Jesse say "OK, now I get it."

Children need names they can grow into.