Can this Turtle Be Saved?

This is a true story.

Clyde the desert turtle had been part of Bob’s family for 12 years, and in the divorce settlement last year, Bob got custody of Clyde and his wife got the two kids. It has never really clear to me if there was an actual court battle over custody, because the obvious but un-askable question is, “Who won?” At any rate, Bob loves Clyde like a child.

My friend Judy was turtle-sitting recently for Clyde while Bob, now Judy’s fiancé, was out of town for the weekend. On Saturday morning Judy noticed that Clyde was dangerously close to the edge of the pool. (This story takes place in California, where, Judy assures me, all homes have pools.) Being a desert turtle, Clyde did not swim, so Judy carefully carried him to the bushes at the edge of the yard, as far from the pool as possible.

Thus discharging her turtle-tending tasks, Judy went through her Saturday ritual of doing her nails and hair, then left for lunch and shopping with her mother.

When she got back, you guessed it: Clyde was at the bottom of the pool. Judy became hysterical. Not hysterical enough to dive in, of course (she had just done her hair, remember), but hysterical enough to run out into the street shrieking, “Help! Help! Clyde’s in the bottom of the pool!” But no one was around (a fact for which I think Judy should be grateful). 

One can only guess the urgency and fear that gripped Judy in those moments. It reminds me of the time when Lassie got her foot caught in a coon trap, and Timmy had to run to the barn to get help, but no one was at the barn.

Finding no help at the barn, so to speak, Judy ran to a neighboring house. There she found a teenager who offered his services (don’t ever say today’s teens aren’t willing to lend a hand), and they raced back to the pool, where the teen dove in and brought up a limp, dead Clyde.

Judy knew how much Clyde meant to Bob, and she knew how to do CPR. Love can motivate us to do strange things. So, you guessed it, she turned Clyde over on his back and started pressing rhythmically. But, alas, after several minutes of pumping, there were no signs of revival.

Judy decided drastic steps were called for. She instructed the helpful teenager to hold open Clyde’s mouth, and she began blowing into it. Soon tiny bubbles started coming out of his nose, er, nose holes. More cardiopulmonary compressions. More blowing. Unbelievably, Clyde started breathing on his own! No doubt his little turtle heart started, too, but really, how can you tell?

But all was not well. Clyde’s back legs hung limp. Now Judy asked herself the heartbreaking question, would Clyde have been better off dead than living as a paraplegic? And even worse, what if he was brain-damaged? She faced the horrible fact that the moments lost while she ran looking for someone else to dive in might have been the difference between an able-bodied and a disabled Clyde.

But this story has a happy ending, at least for Clyde. Judy called the turtle doctor (remember, this takes place in California) and, as instructed, wrapped Clyde in blankets. When he came out of shock, he had full use of his legs and full mental capacity, Judy reports. (Another un-askable question: how can you tell if a turtle has full mental capacity?)

Judy told Bob the whole story, fully expecting a shower of gratitude and something akin to adoration for resuscitating a desert turtle. Bob, however, was more miffed that she hadn’t immediately dived in to save poor Clyde. So, the ending for Judy and Bob remains to be seen.

Baby's Last Name

In 1977 it was pretty radical for a married couple not to give a baby the father’s name. Actually, it still is. But Tom and I were feminists, and we recognized that a patrinominal system reflects a patriarchal society, which reflects a sexist society, which we did not support. So we decided our baby did not necessarily have to have his name. Our small decision did not change society, as I’m sure you all know, but back to my story. 

We did know one couple, our friends Bob and Linda, who also planned to buck the father’s-name system, but their plan was not being tested by an actual pregnancy. Their plan was that any girl children would have Linda’s surname, and boys would have Bob’s. But Tom and I didn’t want to go in that direction and let sex determine the name. As it turned out for Bob and Linda (for those of you who like to tie up loose threads), they did later carry out their plan. Conveniently, they had one boy and one girl.

We considered combining our names. Goode and Wiseman were, after all, not bad contenders for a merger. Sure, Wisegoode sucked, but Goodman sounded fine. However, we felt Goodman, or even Goodman, would sacrifice the integrity of both our names. The integrity of a name was just a vague notion to me at the time, but in the years since I’ve developed a clearer sense that a name does have an integrity—a wholeness and a clarity that should not be distorted.

We thought about hyphenation. Goode-Wiseman? Wiseman-Goode? But what would happen when a Wiseman-Goode married a Nowinski-Nykoruk, and then the Wiseman-Goode-Nowinski-Nykoruk married a Baker-VerPorter-Waeckerle-Heitman? This clearly could not end well.

Using my name as Baby’s middle name was a possibility we considered. There were plenty of models for such use of family names. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Lyndon Baines Johnson. Richard Milhous Nixon. But I really didn’t want to saddle Baby with having to become President.

Ultimately, we decided we would name one child Goode and one Wiseman. Naturally we intended to have only two children, doing our part toward zero population growth.

Then the friends started weighing in: A kid without the father’s name would make people question whether we were really married. We would be sentencing a child to playground ridicule about being a bastard. Everyone would think the kids were step-siblings, thrown together from two divorces. Our children would have lifelong identity problems. Different names would provide a breeding ground for divisiveness in our family, would worsen sibling rivalry, would lead to each child’s emotionally aligning more with one parent than the other. 

You have to put this in the perspective of 1977, mind, long before the term “blended family” came into common parlance. Also, this was before 40.2% (I just checked) was the proportion of babies being born to unmarried women. And, really, hardly any of them are called bastards. (OK, I didn’t check on that, but you hardly ever hear that name being yelled out on the Metro.)

Ignoring our friends, Tom and I stuck by our plan to divvy up the surnames of our planned two kids. But whose name would go to this first baby? In the end, it was the opposition from our friends that convinced us to give Baby my name—Wiseman. Our thinking was that if we chose Tom’s name for the Baby 1, we would make people happy, but all hell would break loose when we switched to Wiseman for Baby 2. Conversely, by using Wiseman first, the opposition would feel relieved when we named the second child Goode. (“Tom and Marian have finally come to their senses!”) Or, failing that, the outrage would have been spent because of Baby Wiseman, and they would no longer care. 

Once Rachel Wiseman arrived, I was astonished by the pleasure it gave me that she had my name. What exactly was this feeling? It was more than the extraordinary love I felt, more than the bond of motherhood. It was a feeling of great satisfaction connected specifically to her having my name. I had never suspected such a feeling even existed in the universe of human emotions. Is this what men have felt for generations? All the patriarchs of history? Small wonder the patrinominal system is so entrenched. 

None of the repercussions portended by our friends came true. Sure, Tom was Mr. Wiseman to all of her teachers, but he never objected. 

One time—she just have been eight or nine—Rachel told me that she and her best friend had been talking about what their names might be when they got married. I give myself great credit for my self-control when I heard this. I did not start shrieking, “You’ll change your name over my dead body!! You think you’re going to cave in to male dominance and set feminism back 30 years?!! Do you think your father and I gave you your name for nothing?!”

No. I was calm. Serene, even. “You do realize, don’t you, honey, that you don’t have to change your name?” With great objectivity I pointed out that it was her choice. I conceded that many women still do take their husband’s name. And I’m quite certain I did not roll my eyes when I said that, though I admit my tone might have hinted that those poor, unenlightened souls were to be pitied. I reassured her that it would be up to her when the time came.

To my friends I said, “If she changes her name, I’ll kill her.”