Name Game

Hello, Friend. Thank you for joining me here!

“What’s in a name?” 

We have been living full time in our new (old) farmhouse in the Saint Croix River Valley for seven months, and it is time we call it something more than home. We know of two previous owners: the man who built the house in 1887, and the family that lived here for over 50 years from whom we purchased the place. Both called the farm by their last names. If we were to continue that tradition, it would be known as Macdonald Farm. You see the problem there, yes? David is not quite ready to be known as ‘Old Macdonald,’ even if he does have graying hair and a farm. On top of that, simply using our last name feels kind of ho-hum. My deep desire to bring meaning and intentionality to as much of my life as possible has resulted in a name quest of great personal importance. 

You may wonder, why do this at all? Name your house, I mean. Admittedly, it can come off as pretty pretentious. Like many grand old traditions, the practice has fallen out of favor. Do you find it snooty? Because I can totally see that. However, doing so isn’t all that strange out here; we have seen multiple signs along the country roads we now travel that identify other properties. There’s a gorgeous, white clapboard house that overlooks our adopted tiny town with a tasteful sign that reads: “Hillside 1854.” On a rambling back road, I saw a sweet spot with a hand painted plank reading: “Little Flower Farm.” Obviously, names are more likely for those who run some kind of business from home, say selling eggs and veggies, or honey and ceramics. (Side note: this particular area has become a haven for potters and hosts an internationally known annual festival that spans a long trail of studios in the spring. Aficionados come from across the globe on Mother’s Day Weekend to admire and add to their collections.) If we had a trade, a name would be helpful, and probably easier to invent. I’d like to take you through our brainstorming process thus far and see what you think. 

When we first looked at our property, we discovered an abundance of lilacs. Buffeting the house from the road is a veritable thicket running approximately 250 feet wide by 17 feet deep. This helps muffle the sound of traffic and provides a handy privacy shield. Throughout the 7 acres, lilacs dominate. There are two Japanese lilacs standing guard along the front walk and multiple bushes near the barns, including white and pink varieties. They must have been a favorite plant of the matriarch who proceeded us here. She had extensive gardens, the remains of which were sadly overgrown by our time. It would be a full time job for at least two people to tame all that’s here, and we certainly don’t have that kind of time. We aim to scale things back now that we are starting fresh from winter’s helpful tamping down. But the one plant we are certain to maintain is lilac.

When I was a young child, I lived in the Twin Cities. We had lilac bushes all around the yard, and my mother adored them. I remember her exclaiming over the heady scent each spring. Her mother, my Nana, was a painter in her latter years, stopping only after my grandfather died. The last thing she painted, as she was losing her husband of 50 years to the ravages of emphysema, was a vase of lilacs. It is, to me, her finest piece and now hangs in my mother’s dining room. It just seems like lilacs are spring. They are sweetness and hope. It felt like a sign to discover them in abundance on the farm, and, of course, I instantly wanted to somehow name the place after the flower. However, after being certain to the point of recurring lilac dreams and extensive iPhone notes listing possible geographical pairings, I encountered a few obstacles.

First, it turns out that not every Minnesotan loves lilacs—not that this changes my own feelings. It is strange to learn about group culture when you relocate. For example, in New Jersey, a lot of people hate deer. They complain about deer eating plants and trampling lawns. They actually group the majestic animals with squirrels—another landscape enemy. Deer are a bitter inconvenience to east coasters. In Minnesota, deer are given greater respect. They are a hazard on the roads, but I’ve seen grown men tear up after hitting one. The other day on my walk, an older man whom I’d passed stopped me to whisper that he’d just seen a doe walk across the path ahead. He pointed excitedly, and his eyes shone like a child’s at Christmas. I never saw her myself, but I felt the magic in her wake. I was raised to love deer. My parents' voices still become hushed and cooing when describing their encounters. My mom maintains that each sighting feels to her like a visit from her parents, now long gone. Spirit animals of their spirits. My dad feeds whole families of deer all winter long, and rejoices to witness their silent gatherings around his offered corn. Cars on the country roads that lead to my daughter’s school slow frequently, the drivers smiling while every last fawn in their path crosses to safety. To me, it feels special to be near them. Same with the lilacs. Who wouldn’t swoon over that intoxicating aroma? Turns out, a fair number of folks in the Saint Croix River Valley. When I’ve mentioned the plant in passing around here, I have received surprisingly varied responses. Some recall a grandmother’s fondness for the delicate purple blossoms, but a good number speak of them almost as a weed. We have actually felt pity directed toward us upon mentioning our profusion of bushes, as if we’d inherited a burden. Like so much about this farm, many would be inclined to rip out those aged branches and start fresh. The very thing I loved most about our land—the plants I took as prophecy—are, for many, a real turn off. On behalf of the deer on the east coast and the lilacs in the midwest, I am chagrinned. I guess these regional inconsistencies have proven that you can really only please yourself. As long as you do not hurt others, you do you. It is far less fraught. Life is definitely too short to pander to nay-sayers or deny your own truth. This is our property, and I am thrilled by the deer tracks winding through the lilacs. Which brings me back to name number one:

LILAC…something. 

Not Lilac Farm, as I do not want to falsely advertise the sale of our precious blooms. But…Lilac Something. As I sat in New Jersey, early in the Pandemic, I brainstormed a long list of possibilities. Get ready. Here goes: Lilac Acres, Lilac Lane, Lilac Fields, Lilac Stretch, Lilac Loam, Lilac Lawn, Lilac Barn, Lilac Pass, Lilac Hamlet, Lilac Corner, Lilac Hollow, Lilac Grove, Lilac Valley, Lilac Sound, Lilac Dell, Lilac Glade, Lilac Dale, Lilac Vale, Lilac Row, Lilac Trail, Lilac Cliffs, Lilac Banks, Lilac Bluff, Lilac Ridge, Lilac Pines. And on. You know how when you are generating ideas, you are not supposed to self edit, but rather let the ideas flow without censor? I did that, for a while. The list grew long, and I came to a point where I was ready to make some cuts. Lilac…Lilac…Lilac Acres is nice-ish. Lilac Lane is good alliteration, but not really accurate as we are on a pretty busy road. Fields we have, though the lilacs are not really in the fields. Stretch…is…a stretch. Loam? What is that even? Lawn feels too rich. Barn: yes, we have two actually. But the barns are falling down, and are red, and that just doesn’t quite work. I pass on Pass. Hamlet may just be me being a cheeky theatre nerd. Likewise, Corner feels overtly ‘Our Town.’ Hollow is a tad spooky. Grove, Valley, Dell, Glade, and Dale are just not topographically accurate. Sound is totally wrong as it indicates an inlet of water, though I appreciate the apt Gatsby connection. Vale is too ‘Game of Thrones’—the House of Arryn being my least favorite group of weirdos. Row recalls Rainbow Row, and the Carolinas, and a theatre where I worked once that was a real nightmare, so no. Trail is too woodsy. Cliffs we do have, but they are all the way at the back of the property, far from any lilac growth. Banks, Bluff, and Ridge—though present—are not the main geographic thrust of this farm. Pines just muddles the botany. And, and, OH MY GOD DO YOU SEE HOW OBSESSED I AM??? I spent months coming up with all manor of lilac pairings, sure that I would eventually strike gold. I knew in my bones that that flower’s presence was a sign and that this new life we were making was blessed by it’s growth. It was providence!! And then…it died.

At some point last July, before Finley and I arrived, David reported that something was wrong with our beloved blooms. The branches were bare. He’d been busy working inside the house and had not really noticed until whatever had caused this calamity had finished its work. Not only were the flowers gone, but nary a leaf remained. The huge wall of lilac bushes that separated us from the outside world looked, in midsummer, to be in bleak midwinter. I was devastated. There wasn’t time in the midst of moving to figure out what had happened, and with this imagined namesake gone, the name game lapsed as well.

I tried to comfort myself with the many voices that had urged me to actually live in the place before attempting nomenclature. I knew they were right, of course. I knew it was silly to base such a lasting decision on the scant 45 minutes I had been there with the realtor. After all, we were renovating and restoring, and the place would change from what I’d first seen. I understood that living on site would teach me what the farm was and how to sum that up in a title ever-after. I just needed to wait. Uh-huh: wait. It was just, well, Covid, quite frankly. I was so very tired of waiting. I wanted to make the dream of our future come true ASAP. I wanted to ‘Name It To Claim It.’ But the lilacs died and so did my wish of quickly crossing christening off my list.

When we were finally all here, I felt silly having based my musings on the sad shrubs before me. The thicket was thin. And ugly. I tried actively to not take it as a sign. I sought out other surrounding aspects to hang my hat on. I waited for inspiration to arrive. And, in its own time, it did.

Early on, after we’d been here only a day or two, I happened upon a stunning sunset, seen from our master bedroom window. The front of our property faces a state park, and across the street there is an open stretch of land. It is the perfect foreground from which to view the sun setting as there are no buildings, nor people, just prairie. It is important to note that as protected land, it is unlikely to ever be developed. I’m not sure how I missed this detail when we were looking at the house, though I remember David exclaiming over the proximity to cross country ski trails. Admittedly, there was a lot to take in during our first brief visit, and my mind was pretty full with not only the actual property of the farm and the amount of renovation needed on the house, but the even weightier thoughts of a life change so massive. Once here, I began to see finer details. One of my goals in moving was to live in a place where we could not see other people from our house. Is that weird? I really, really wanted privacy. It isn’t that I needed privacy to carry out strange rituals or run around outside naked or anything. I just like the quiet, both aural and mental. I like breathing room. I wanted peace. There was something about how close the houses were to each other in New Jersey that always made me feel like I was in a fishbowl. I worried often about needing to be quiet. If I yelled at my 3 year old—and I did do that because age 3 was HORRIFIC for us and pushed me to all my mama limits—I worried that the neighbors would judge. Now, you should know that we had the most amazing neighbors there. Not only did they not judge me, they became dear friends, but that’s not the point. I wanted solitude, not because of other people, but because of myself. As Greta Garbo said, “I vant to be alone.” The anxiety that I struggle with daily is aided immensely by the elimination of any extra stimulus. It was amazing to me that the vast field across the road had gone previously unnoticed as it was precisely what I craved. On top of its soothing emptiness, it puts on a spectacular closing number almost every evening. Mother Nature seems to like an empty stage because she lights up that expanse nightly with every shade of pink, peach, purple, rose, magenta, and yes, lilac. 

Now, you might think that having a daily sunset show would be luck enough for a sweet farm like this, but it gets better. As I did back east once Covid lockdown started, in order to have any time by myself, I generally wake up here before the rest of the household—which also means before the sun. I use the time to organize my day and sometimes write to you. During the first mornings at the farmhouse, I noticed that the back of our land—composed of outbuildings, broken down barns, and a large pasture that ends in a drop-off at the cliffs which bank the Saint Croix River—has a pretty clear view of the eastern sky. Do you see where I’m going here? I was making coffee in our temporary kitchen/future dining room on one of these days, and a glow drew my eye. Out the rear window, as if that window was made for it, was a sky to rival paradise. Neon orange, lavender, red—a Technicolor dream. I do believe my jaw dropped. I am certain I exclaimed aloud. And it suddenly struck me: this house, built by an Italian immigrant in the 1880’s, was purposely placed on the sun’s path. The original, wavy glass windows were literally built to frame these natural glories. What an astounding double feature! I can just imagine that man, whom I’ve seen in a grainy black and white photo from the local Historical Society, holding his index fingers and thumbs together in L shapes to make a square around the dawn while proclaiming, “Here we shall have a window.” Since this occurred to me, its truth has been proven daily. Even on an overcast morning or unremarkable eve, the rise and fall of the sun is a blessed arc that cradles our day. We sit in the center and call out to each other at dawn and dusk, “Look at the sky, quick!!” because it changes so fast. There’s no time to lose as the most outrageous beauty lasts mere moments. Every day, twice a day, such miracles.

How in the world could we not include this spectacular display in our farm’s name? It is a constant: day to day, season to season. Though the sun shifts slightly throughout the year, we have all-encompassing views both east and west. This will not change. The state park to the west and our pasture to the east will not be built on; we won’t pave paradise or put up a parking lot. And, unlike a plant, which can suffer from climate change, insect activity, and all manner of blight, the sun will always rise and set. As long as we and the house remain standing, we are here for it. But how to express it? There is already a song, “Sunrise, Sunset,” from Fiddler On The Roof—which I did in high school, weirdly enough—so that’s out. There is already the well-known epithet of “rosy-fingered dawn” from The Odyssey. There is also already the ubiquitous Equinox gym, so urban and sleek, which is definitely an incompatible reference. There is even a “Farmhenge Festival.” As you can see, I googled a lot on the topic, both tips for naming a place and specific terms for all things sun related. In all that searching, I did discover that ‘twilight’ can actually refer to both dusk and dawn. That sparked interest since we are trying to capture both. But then, David’s son pointed out that “Twilight” was not only the name of a semi-cheesy vampire movie, but denoted the end of life. I believe he said it made us sound old and like we came here to die. Awesome. That certainly burst my bubble a bit. However, I was growing attached to the idea of twilight because it reminded me of something else…

In the theatre, just before a performance begins, the Stage Manager calls the actors to places. “Places” means the place you need to be in order to start the show, usually just offstage if you enter first, for example. Once at places, you can usually hear the audience buzzing. The next call is “House To Half.” That means that the lights in the audience (aka: The House) dim halfway, before a total blackout is called. This is a brief transition between the real world and the world of the play. When I am in the audience and the house lights go to half, I sometimes feel giddy. There is an anticipatory thrill that often ripples through the theatre. Backstage, we feel it, too. We sense (and often hear) the crowd bubble up with energy for what is to come, and we feel our own happy butterflies for the journey we are about to take. It is a suspended moment, in half light, where we all let go of what was and look forward to what will soon be. A delicious caesura. And isn’t twilight exactly that? Dawn brings us the hope filled minutes just prior to our personal ‘Lights Up’ for the day, and with it the realization that we can always start over. Sunset celebrates the day, the last rays of light bursting forth like applause for all we did. It glows on you, ebbing seamlessly into the sweet relief of ‘Blackout.’ If the day was hard, evening twilight can bring respite: “It’s OK now, just relax, look at me, I’m setting…shhhhhhh.” It has been wondrous to live in a place where these celestial transformations are so present, our home sitting in the midst of heaven’s ‘house to half’ call. We watch from the front row in breathless delight.

How do we put all of the above into a of couple words? I’m really thinking that, regardless of its drawbacks, Twilight must be in the farm’s name since it technically indicates both the sunrise and the sunset. Since it occurs twice a day, we can make it plural, which gives it some differentiation from the vampire association. We are decided upon using Farm, rather than any other descriptor of the property. It just suits. So: {Something} Twilights Farm. David came up with Two Twilights, which I like a lot. I took it an alliterative step further to Twin Twilights, extra fun due to the fact that we are both Geminis, but David finds astrology to be malarky. Perhaps I can sway him by our proximity to the Twin Cities? There is, of course, a combination of both the original flower idea and the solar arc with Lilac Twilights Farm, but that’s a mouthful, no? For a time, Homer be damned, I wanted to include a nod to the rose color in our painted skies since we met playing Daisy and Gatsby in the stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby; one of my favorite lines to him was, “I’d like to get one of those pink clouds, and put you in it and push you around.” Ha! However, Pink Twilights Farm feels a bit saccharine, although Finley would certainly approve.

So, there we are. That was a long, meandering way to ask: friend, what do you think? I would love to hear your ideas and/or opinions in the comments below. I really am itching to commit. I think the current front runner is Two (or Twin) Twilights Farm, simply because those pop into my head most often. I do wish there was a way to get color or emotion or theatricality in there, too, but brevity is key when attempting to avoid affectation (my lengthy explanation to the contrary!). I realize this pursuit is kind of silly, but it’s a nice distraction while we wait for vaccines and travel and justice for all. It’s a way to uplift the home in which we are still stuck, and maybe make it feel a tiny bit more special. I know that no name will ever encompass all that our life here will hold. It doesn’t matter what we call it, it is still ours to love in and live in, as fully as we can until our own twilights fade.

A rosy-fingered dawn by any other name will dwell as sweet.

Bottom photo: My Nana’s Still Life of Lilacs

Top photo: Dawn from our pasture, no filter.