Mom is now a Texan! She's staying with us for a couple of weeks until we complete the move and we are already having fun. It's been a long time since Mom has been able to come here for visit and once she is in her own place she'll only be 5 minutes away.
I brought a lot of papers for her to sort through (at her request). As she weeded through them, she found birth and wedding certificates. When she found hers she looked at me and said that I probably should know something. I was not sure what to expect because she seemed so serious.
It turns out my mother has a first name that I never knew about! My mom is Zena – a warrior princess! (OK, I know they spelled it with an X, but it's pronounced the same.) She hated the name Zena growing up and I don't think she ever went by it. Even now, she's not crazy about people knowing. I told her I was going to blog about it and half of her was sort of pleased and the other half was not so sure. So don't any of you call my mom Zena.
My mother had an Aunt Zena who had black hair, twinkly eyes, and a hot temper. She raised four boys. Mom said her Aunt Zena was always an adament anti-smoker until she got to her 70s and then she 'smoked like a firestack'.
People describe my mother to me as a sweet, thoughtful lady – and she is. She is also tough. She grew up poor in West Virginia coal mining country. She got out of high school and went to work in a law office. She met my dad, they got married and moved to Oklahoma. She raised us, and went back to school when it was unusual for a woman in her 40s to do that. She earned a nursing degree and worked for many years as an RN. Daddy has been gone many years and mom has soldiered on. I think she is a perfect warrior princess!
On a related note, when we named our boys Harley Christopher (who we call Chris) and Arthur Jeffrey (who is Jeff) she said that it was a bad idea to make a kid go by their middle name but she never said that she knew that because she had done it her whole life! We didn't listen and the boys have somehow managed to survive. Mothers can be so funny :-).
PS – Mom does not look remotely like Lucy Lawless.
Piece O Cake Blog 
Funny! I LOVE the name Zena! Just curious, what’s her middle name?
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My moms name (which I now know is her middle name) is Elizabeth. A lovely, normal, mom name that has served her well.
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I have a Lauren Elizabeth, who goes by Lizzy. She’s named after my father Loren, who died on my birthday the year I was pregnant with the aforementioned daughter. She prefers Lizzy, as Lauren (in our family anyway) carries a manly conotation.
My mother was Sylvia Carolyn and went by Carol growing up and is now Carolyn.
Isn’t it funny how we don’t name the kid what he’ll be called?
We also have a Robert John who goes by RJ. (sigh…)
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MaryLu: More strange name antics: Zena Elizabeth goes by “Libby.” Her husband (my father-in-law) was John Daniel Eckroat, and went by Jack. My boys (Harley Christopher and Arthur Jeffrey – Chris and Jeff) were competitive about who would have a son and name him something that would work to call him Jack – Chris had a son who is now 3+; Chris and Lorna named him John Patrick Kelly Goldsmith, and we call him Jack. His great-grandfather was John, his grandfather is Kelly, and his great-uncle is Patrick – Chris and Lorna are channeling their Irish roots.
BTW, Chris and Jeff decided that two Goldsmith boys called Jack would not be a bad thing, so we may have another one in the future.
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I have a feeling you are going to LEARN lots of antidotes about your family now that your mother is right with you. Be sure to write them all down or at least record them. Your kids and grandkids will love you for it some day. Those stories are priceless.
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I love the name Zena! My kids would think I was crazy if I threw this name in the hat. My dads family used the last names of the mothers…Scott-last name of grandmother, Handley-last name of his mother, and his dads last name of course. So I used my mothers last name, Stewart, for my son’s middle name, but he goes by his first, Ben [Benjamin] as do his sisters.
Sorry guys, no Jacks in my bunch, except in their trades.
Steve- hows the pool?
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Vicky: The pool is fine – the water temperature is probably about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not much below the water temperature in caves. I can jump in and stay for a few seconds – I have been in several times in the past few days. But then we have been having unseasonably warm weather for north Texas.
Steve
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What a wonderful little tid bit of information for mom to give you. I agree with one of the other people who commented – write it all down somewhere. Your grandkids are going to love it some day!!
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