The repercussions of naming your child Jonah

Antonia likes to tell friends, family and perfect strangers how she ended up with her name. About how when I was in college I was constantly told by my mother to pray to St. Anthony because he was the saint that watched over losers. Well... people who LOSE things, anyway. I was most definitely qualified as a loser in the early '90s. I lost my keys every third Friday or so. And my driver's license. I was endlessly misplacing my soils textbooks, my very anemic notes, my oversized backpacks, class schedules, nail clippers, hair scrunchies, etc. It affected me in more ways than one. For example, I was always wandering around lost in dreams, playing slot machines and waiting for someone to come find me and take me to the airport. And then one sadder-than-usual day... I lost my checkbook. The checkbook that had my innumerous high-interest-rate credit cards tucked away inside, 20 bucks in tips... not to mention THE CHECKBOOK with ALLLL that student loan money I had just deposited into it. I told myself, "Self. This is it. You are going to be seriously poor now, all because you can't pull your brain cells together like a normal, functioning adult that accounts for their material belongings regularly." And then I finally did what my mother (and aunts and subconscious) had told me to do so many times before. I prayed to this St. Anthony dude, in a mocking, half-hearted kind of way. I remember laughing as I said out loud, "All right! If you can find it in you to help me with this checkbook fiasco, I will be SO UTTERLY impressed that I will name my first child after you." BEHOLD. Almost immediately, I got a phone call from someone who said, "Hey, is this Catherine? I just found your checkbook and thought I'd dial the phone number printed here and let you know that I'm on my way to your address, that's also printed here, to return it to you!!" Upon hearing this, I had the intestinal butterflies of someone who'd just accidentally bumped into their soulmate at the mall. Mr. Anonymous sounded just as thrilled... in a good Samaritan kind of way. About five minutes later, he was knocking at my door to return the goods. Everything intact, not even a dollar of my tips missing. He wanted no reward, no cold drink, no French kiss. Returning it to its rightful owner was reward enough, he said. So, three years later, true to my word, I was holding this 7 lb. 13 oz screaming, squirming ball of miraculousness who would forevermore be known as "Antonia." Maybe Toni. (Anthony just seemed a little weird for a girl.) And, while I'm not religious by any stretch of the imagination, I still consider St. Anthony to be a secret pal, kind of like Santa Claus but without the commercialism. Great story, right? Toni thinks so, anyway.

THEN there's my almost-seven-year-old son. Jonah. He's been told a million and one times that he was named after the little boy in Sleepless in Seattle because, at the time, his father was in love with everything Tom Hanks. And, besides, we didn't know any Jonahs. It was simple. And original. And better than the SECOND name his father was leaning towards which was Walter. As in Payton. As in NOT. Yet Jonah has chosen to believe all the compelling strangers around him that counter he was ACTUALLY named for a prophet that refused to save the sin city of Nineveh and was henceforth swallowed by a large whale to contemplate the err in his ways. Okay, maybe he doesn't say it quite like that. Nonetheless, he's in love with the idea that he could hang out in the innards of a whale with nothing to keep him company but his hobo pack, waiting for the whale to sneeze him out... because it IS kind of Pinnochio-ish. I've decided to let it go. The real story just doesn't put out NEAR the flamboyant artwork.

I'll deal with the origins of Emma and Kyra's names later. At three and two, respectively, they currently could care less what sitcom character/Biblical phenom/estranged aunt they were named after. I figure I've got at least three years left to think up something really epic.

Have a happy 4th, everyone! See you on the other side.