what's in a name?

as yesterday was harper’s original due date, i believe it’s a good time to explain the reason we chose the name harper. no need to mess around, i’ll just jump right in. my sister, my mom, and i moved from georgia to virginia when i was eight years old to live with my now stepfather and his three children. my stepfather worked as a lawyer in the voting rights section of the justice department, a job he would have for twenty years.

his job and experience working with voting rights discrimination taught us more than the average kid had to know or learn when black history month rolled around. he used to bring home huge black government binders filled with voter registration forms that turned away african americans for insane reasons like hair or eye color, inability to spell correctly, or items left blank. i remember flipping through the pages and imagining the person behind each rejection and what it must feel like to spend your life fighting, most of the time unsuccessfully, for life’s most basic rights. very early on i felt a sense of pride that my stepfather was a modern day carpet bagger and was trying to make things right for people in his own way. he is still doing it today.

a book (and subsequent film) that played a huge roll in our lives as kids was Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. we came to know the characters of this book intimately: jem, scout, dill, calpurnia, aunt stephanie, bob ewell, mayella ewell, boo radley, tom robinson, mr. cunningham and his son walter, and of course atticus. in the film gregory peck gave us a face to match the tolerant, fair, and heroic man that is atticus finch. but our real life version was my stepfather.

just a few years ago my four siblings and i received first edition copies of the book. one of these is hard to come by. our parents found five. the covers are ripped, the pages brown with age, but it is one of the gifts i treasure most in my life.

so there it is. a book, a film, a cast of characters ingrained into the fiber of our lives. and the author, harper lee.

and a it turns out, yesterday, july 11, harper’s due date, was the 49th anniversary of the publishing of to kill a mockingbird.

how’s that for crazy?

and by the way, sabine is a family name from tom’s side. one i have always loved.

and like everything else in our lives the name we chose had to have a deeper meaning, beyond the sound, beyond the popularity, beyond peoples' opinions.

so welcome to the world, harper sabine.