Baby Names

Kieran didn’t come back on the day scheduled. A heavy storm and multiple landslides closed off all the airports in the region near the border. The only consolation was that the internet still worked over there. Kieran called me every day to update me on the situation. He spent hours thinking up names for the unborn baby. ‘Ken if it’s a boy,’ he suggested. ‘And if it’s a girl? Don’t tell me you are going to call her Barbie,’ I complained. ‘No. Not the Ken in Ken and Barbie. Ken for Kenneth.’ ‘Fine. What about the girl’s name?’ ‘Celeste. It means “heavenly.”’ ‘Um…’ I didn’t want our daughter to have a name that rhymed with ‘molest.’ Besides, it sounded kind of…stripperish. But I wasn’t about to argue with him over the phone. We have eight months more to debate on baby names. Kieran called with good news on a breezy morning. The storm was over. The roads had been repaired. He and Kingsley were on their way back. Estelle decided to stay in the small border town. She did fulfil her end of t