The Grand Arrival.

Emory Lucia Shoop was born at 7:01 a.m. on March 5th — exactly a month ago yesterday.

{Welcome, baby girl.}

I’ve had a difficult time writing about her birth because I find myself so consumed with the bigness of my emotions that words fail me and tears get the better of me.  I will have to one day write about the many surprises of giving birth and the first few weeks thereafter–chief among them the intensity of the emotions, for which I was wholly unprepared.  The first two weeks were a blur of tears and a feeling that my heart had been wrenched out of my body, mostly in a good way (joy! elation!) and, admittedly, partly in an exhausted-pain-riddled-overwhelmed-what-am-I-doing kind of way.  A dear friend who had given birth a month before me nodded knowingly and said, “It’s the post-delivery trifecta — exhaustion, hormones, and oxytocin — and you cry all the time.”  She sat on my couch next to me ten days after Emory was born while I cried in front of her, and just said: “Let it out, girlfriend.”  Another friend with a baby just three months older than minimagpie consoled me with: “Yep, there was one day a few days after my son was born that I don’t think I stopped crying.”  And my mom squeezed my hand and helped me eke out a some much-needed laughter through my tears.  But the intensity of those first few weeks was a surprise.  Beautiful, joyful, exciting, precious–but intense.

At any rate, I thought I might try to write obliquely about her arrival, to come at it from a gentler angle, by explaining her name.  I shared our desire to give minimagpie a name that sounded like a “woman of substance,” and a lot of you reacted strongly to our intentions.  (In fact, that post spawned a whole series of posts on amazing, tenacious, inspiring women of substance.  And if you have a referral/recommendation for this series, shoot me a note!)

But: my little Emory.  And her name.

One afternoon several years ago, before Mr. Magpie and I had even begun to talk about starting a family, we drove from D.C. to Lexington, Virginia, home of the college Washington + Lee and one of those gorgeous, bucolic bits of the Mid-Atlantic where it feels as though time has stopped.  One of those parts of rural Virginia that feels so untouched, so lush and green with its rolling, verdant hills and beautiful foliage, that you can’t help but imagine the colonists first embarking on its shores and you just know that not much has changed in the hundreds of years intervening.

We wound through unpaved country roads, the side-view mirrors whacking tree branches out of the way, until we stopped at a beautiful country home whose drive was already packed with cars.  Friendly faces and open arms streamed out of the house, greeting us: it was a Shoop family reunion.  I’d never even met most of the attendees except for a few cursory moments at our wedding years earlier, but we felt like movie stars.  These salt-of-the-earth folks knew so much about us and were so excited and eager to pass the weekend with us.

There is nothing like family, even family you’ve luckily inherited through marriage.  I was so touched by their interest in us, our lives, our livelihoods.

Much of the reunion was spent sitting around over glasses of wine, swapping family lore and looking over family heirlooms and photographs that had been resurrected for the occasion, including the helmet Mr. Magpie’s grandfather had worn in WWII.  It bore a hole in the side where shrapnel had fallen.  He’d survived the injury, but the helmet was a haunting reminder of the difficult times of the past.

The patriarch of the family, a big-bearded, jolly gentleman (Mr. Magpie’s father’s cousin) was an expert story-teller, and at one point, he pulled out a carefully maintained family ledger listing all of the family members and their birth and death and marriage dates.  I was surprised to see my name already inscribed in it.  I pored over the pages and was struck by the name Emory, the name of a Shoop family gentleman from generations prior.  It was such an unusual but sturdy and all-American name.  An heirloom.  I tucked it away and thought, tentatively, I might consider using it for a future child.

As Mr. Magpie and I discussed potential names for minimagpie, Emory continued to resurface.  I loved its gender neutrality–it sounds both strong and tough and at the same time sweet and melodic.  And we both loved the idea of repurposing a name from generations past, an homage to Landon’s good-natured and hard-working lineage from the Mid-Atlantic.  Beyond that, I loved that it was a name I’d discovered on a weekend dedicated to Mr. Magpie’s roots–a weekend of making new connections and resurfacing old ones, and all in sweet home Virginia, which bears so many important memories and landmarks for myself and my family.

So, after shuttling between a handful of first-name contenders for a few weeks, we realized we consistently returned to Emory.  It just felt right for our little spitfire.

I knew, then, that I wanted a decidedly more feminine middle name, so that if her full name was read aloud, there would be no question that she was a girl.  I have long loved the name Lucia, the namesake of my Italian great-grandmother, whom I mentioned first here for her insane bravery in immigrating to the United States at the tender age of 19.  Within hours of Emory’s birth, my father sent the loveliest email to myself and my siblings sharing a little bit about his beloved grandmother.  I’m sharing it below because my father is an exquisite and precise writer, always capable of finding the mot juste, and he has put things better than I ever could:

Dear Emory,