When a Name Becomes a Relationship

Bird's-Foot Trefoil, and other lessons in love.

Recently, while looking back through some old writing, I came across this short essay and felt the urge to give it a new life. It’s always been a favorite because it captures an early time in my marriage to Bob, when the cultural collision of his farm background and my more urban one offered all sorts of new understandings, misunderstandings, and chances to see things differently.

The heart of this piece still feels so true to me—how naming something changes the way we see it. When we know a name, we begin a relationship. We notice more. We care more. We connect.

I hope you enjoy this story and the writing prompts that follow. They’re an invitation to look a little closer at the world around you—and to let naming be a doorway to deeper connection.

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We’re driving to Kansas City from Iowa for my brother’s fiftieth birthday party. I’m behind the wheel of the Honda Civic, Bob is beside me with a foam pillow in the small of his back and his long legs folded off to each side. We’re driving along Interstate 35, which I’ve driven hundreds of times in my life, speeding along and looking out the windows at green fields. Bob is telling me about soybeans.

“You know what the soybean seedling is called?” he asks me, knowing that I have no clue.

“I have no clue,” I say.

“It’s ‘cotyledon.’”

This is a word that I have never heard in all my life. Ever. There is nothing even vaguely familiar about it.

“What did you call it?”

“Cotyledon.”

“Did you make that up?” I have a hard time believing that a word I have never heard before has just been uttered in the Civic as we’re driving along Interstate 35, even if it is a word having to do with soybeans.

“No,” Bob says. “That’s what the seedling is called.”

Then he explains something that, again, I’ve never heard before. When the soybean breaks through the earth in germination, he says, it’s the seed itself that pushes up through the soil. It’s not like other plants that germinate underground and send a shoot up toward the sun. This is the seed, the whole fat little embryo, shoving itself through the hard ground with no birth canal to guide its journey.

“Really?” I say, gaining a newfound respect for soybeans.

“Yup,” Bob says.

We drive along in silence for a minute.

“See that grass over there?” Bob asks, pointing at the mass of grasses in the ditch along the road. I have never looked at individual grasses along Interstate 35 before. I have only sped past them and noticed that, in general, the ditches are filled with weeds.

“That’s bird’s-foot trefoil,” he says.

Again, I think he’s kidding.

“Bird’s head aluminum foil?” I ask.

He smiles. “No. Bird’s-foot trefoil. It’s a legume.”

Really? How does he know this?

“Now that one over there,” he says, as if I could distinguish one from the other, “is lespedeza.”

“Ipsy-daisy,” I say.

“No,” he says. “Lespedeza. It’s a legume, too.”

“Okay,” I say. “There’s bird’s-foot Reynolds Wrap and ipso-facto.”

He smiles.

We go on like this for several miles. But even though I’m uncooperative, I realize that Bob is giving names to a world in which I’ve lived my entire life but have never had even a passing acquaintance.

“Let’s find some Timothy grass,” he says.

At least this one, like brome and fescue, has a name I can pronounce.

My brother, the one who is turning fifty, has a son named Timothy. Bob suggests that we pull off onto a country road and look for some Timothy grass to take along as a surprise. I’m looking at the clock and wanting to get on down the road, but I can’t deny the sweetness of the gesture.

We pull off at the Liberty exit and drive up a gravel road. We almost give up, but just at the spot where we resign ourselves to turning around, Bob points and says, “There it is.” He climbs out of the car and over the barbed-wire fence, and he picks two lengths of sturdy grass with fluffy heads at the end.

As he climbs back in, I feel something soft settle between us—this way he notices things, names them, carries them like small offerings. Maybe that’s what relationship is: giving language to the world for each other, so that it becomes richer, fuller, more known.

I look at the grass he holds in his large hands. Timothy, I repeat to myself. I look closely this time, trying to memorize the length of the head and the color of the stalk, just as I would the face of a stranger I am likely to meet again.

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Writing/Reflection Prompts

• For one day, pay attention to the people and life forms around you. Do you know their names? If not, introduce yourself, find out who they are. How does naming them change your relationship with them?

• How would your world be different if you paid attention and got the name of the people you encounter through the day?

• How does a name acknowledge someone or something? How would the world be different if we were all acknowledged on a regular basis?

With blessings,

Deb

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A NOTE TO MY READERS: I write “A World of Your Own” as a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, which is led by Julie Gammack, of Des Moines. I’m honored to be part of this group, featuring the diverse voices of more than 70 professional writers and journalists across the state of Iowa. I encourage you to check out their columns.