Jared Tells His Naming Story

My name was actually given to me by my mom. She had a friend who named her son Jared and she liked the name so much she gave it to me. Even though my mom never married my dad and she has married twice since, I carry my dad’s last name. The early memories of my dad are few. He was only around until I was about four or five years old. My mom and dad were never married and didn’t live together. He’d come and get me on the weekends and take me to his house. He lived in the mountains of Colorado and had a girlfriend who also had a son. Her son was about seventeen at the time. There wasn’t much at the house for me…not even a bed. I slept on a mattress on the floor. Mostly I remember spending those weekends just roaming around the house. I didn’t really interact with my dad. He’d buy me little toy dinosaurs and leave me alone to play with those.

It wasn’t that he left me all alone without checking on me, he would ask every once in a while if I was okay. But, for the most part, I was by myself with my toys or playing out in the yard. The only memory I have of spending any time with him…and it’s fuzzy…is when I would ride my tricycle around the concrete floor in the basement which was his “room”. Even then it wasn’t much interaction, I was just near him. As I look back on it I’m not really sure why he came to get me for those weekends except out of some sense of obligation.

Even without words my father named me. I’m not sure how to describe it, but I felt like an obligation. Nothing he put much thought or effort into. One time we were in a hot tub together and he was on the phone. I got myself into the deep middle of the tub where it was over my head. He stayed on the phone and simply stuck his leg out lifting me up so my head was above water. He met his obligation to keep me from drowning but, as I think about it now, there wasn’t any rush or sense of concern or care. Unlike Tim’s experience where words were used for the names given him, with my father it was the lack of words that told me I was unimportant. It was almost like being a ghost, invisible to my father even though he knew I was in his presence. I had to work to get his attention.