“This is an unopened bag! That’s a good thing, because Mama deserves a fresh cup of coffee.”

That would be my husband rejoicing.

I wish I could say that him referring to me as Mama when the children are not around is an aberration. I wish I could say that there is not a corresponding “Daddy” of mine for every “Mama” of his, but that would be lying.

We certainly didn’t see ourselves here long long ago when we first began to procreate. Around that time met a couple in their fifties. We were still in our twenties. She called him Daddy and he called her Mother and Paul and I thought, you have got to be kidding me. We were on the eve of the 21st century and yet these two were in the dark ages. Can you imagine?

And then God gave us a profoundly deaf child. He could hear some and in order to help him follow conversations I began to call Paul Daddy when Christopher was present and Paul began to refer to me as Mama. It started harmlessly enough. We wanted to support our little boy as he was working to learn his own name, not to mention, ours.

The little boy is now ten and could tell you my first, middle, maiden and last names without a problem, yet there is no end in sight to the Hillbilly hierarchy of names Paul and I have established.

And so we take it one day at a time, one incident at a time, really, “Please call me Alison,” I ask with a weary tone but then ten minutes later I am calling him Daddy.