I like my name. It’s mostly just mine. In fact, I’ve met maybe two Hopes in my entire life. The year I was born, Hope ranked #435 in popularity, right after Ladonna and Hazel.
Good.
And I like that H-o-p-e isn’t just a proper noun. Those four letters and their variants can be a common noun, adjective, adverb, verb, transitive verb, intransitive verb, and pronoun. That’s a hard working, flexible word. That’s a word you can count on.
Yet sometimes my name annoys me. What am I supposed to be hoping for? Hope springs eternal, and all that? Is it’s mocking me (especially those times I don’t feel hopeful about much of anything)?
Then it hits me. My name isn’t just for me.
A week ago I met a homeless man in a wheelchair. Moving slowly up a Seattle hill, he used his only leg to slowly push himself up backward. Waiting for my 6 a.m. ride to my day job, I asked him if I could push him the rest of the way up. “No,” he said quietly. “I’m okay.” He crept up the hill: Push. pause. Push. pause. Push. pause.
I saw him again the next day, and the next. Push. pause. Push. pause. “Can I help you up the hill?” I asked each day. “No,” he whispered. “I’m okay.”
On the the third day, he passed me as usual, but then rolled back down to me. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m really hungry. Do you have anything I could eat?” I didn’t, and I didn’t have any cash on me, to boot. “That’s okay,” he whispered.
“No, it’s not,” I insisted. “Tomorrow I’m bringing you breakfast. Okay?” I don’t think he believed me, so I stuck out my hand. “I’m Hope.”
The next morning I handed a bag to my new friend, “C,” and since it was a Friday, I’d packed enough food for a couple of breakfasts. And he finally let me push him up the hill. When we reached the top, my van had pulled up, and he said, “See you Monday.”
“Yes, you will.”
I was born in Chicago on a cold Easter Sunday morning, and when the nurse asked my parents, Anna and Richard, what name to put on the birth certificate, they told her “Deborah Joy,” the name they’d agreed upon if I was a girl.
Off the nurse went, presumably, to make me officially “Deborah Joy.” My dad, I’m told, left with her, to head home to tell their existing two daughters about their new sister.
Soon, though, my mother tracked down the nurse. “Don’t put Deborah Joy on her birth certificate,” she told her. “Put down Hope Cathleen.” And the nurse did.
As it turns out, my name isn’t really just for me at all.
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