Obediently, I grab a pen and paper. The pen hardly writes and the paper boasts my five-year-old’s work of art — a drawing with stick figures and a brightly smiling yellow sun. I turn over the page, straining to hear his words.

“My family comes from Moshe Tzvi Hirsch,” he continues, “and yours comes from Chaya.” He adds in dates and details, names and more names, as my family tree grows and grows.

My husband and I had been considering a name for our newborn son, whose bris was in a few days’ time.

“I think there are some good names on my side of the family,” I’d told my husband.

“Okay,” he’d said agreeably. “But how are you going to find out what they are?”

Eight years too late to ask my father, I called my oldest brother, who knows everything. He told me about a man in Monsey who knows a lot about our family. I hesitated to call him, a chasiddish man in his sixties. But call him I do, because this was suddenly so very important to me.

The man, a distant cousin of mine, sounds delighted to hear from me. He tells me what he knows about my father’s side of the family.

“Every time I make a chasunah I call your great-uncle and I say ‘Max, come to the wedding, I’ll send a limo to Co-op City to pick you up,’” he says benevolently. My newborn’s about to start crying. I put the pacifier in his mouth and almost say, “Why don’t you send the limo to Passaic instead, we would come,” but I don’t because you can’t really say that to a newly discovered third cousin.

Later, after the kids are sleeping, I show my husband the paper. I read out the names to him, explaining who was related to whom, and how.

“Hmmm,” he says. “There’s lots to think about here.”

I think. I think so much, my head hurts. I think about all the interesting names on that paper, my bubbes and zeides from the old country, who ended up having descendants like this man in Monsey, and like my cousin Brianna, and me.

By the next morning I’ve memorized the family tree. My sweet blue bundle hardly sleeps and spends most of his waking hours crying. I pace the floor with him, walking to the beat of the family tree. I rock him to its tune. I recite the names again and again. Asher Zelig, Chana, Yisrael, Moshe Tzvi Hirsch, Meir, Chaya, Berish, Priva...

We contemplate and ask sh’eilos and discuss and discuss some more; the bris is only a day away and we haven’t yet decided on a name.

“Surprise me,” I say to my husband the next morning. “You pick the name.”

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 618)