Katy McKenna Raymond  
Personal blog of christian writer Katy McKenna Raymond in Kansas City, Missouri

Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri


Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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For Your Monday Morning Entertainment

Here’s a piece of fiction I’ve started. I’m posting it here just for fun. If you have any ideas about where the story might go from here, let me know. Hope you enjoy it!

Not every innocent Catholic girl gets shouldered with bearing the life-long cross of being named Dympna. I think I’ve finally figured out why. 

Saints Online spills the theological beans in no uncertain terms: “St. Dympna—Patron Saint of the Mentally Ill.”

That’s right. They go to the trouble of capitalizing Mentally Ill like it’s a professional title or an academic distinction or something. Isn’t that Special?

On alternate websites devoted to the saints, she’s variously described as the patron of the Emotionally Disturbed, the Insane, and my hands-down favorite, the Lunatic.

So there you have it.

I’ve never known which one of them deserved the most blame, Mom or Dad. If naming babies is anything like dancing the tango, I figure it takes two. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re both sober.

When I finally figured out the finer points of the facts of life, I decided that Mom popped me out, took one look at my blotchy baby-acne, amniotic-fluid-logged wrinkles, forceps-induced cone-head, and confused expression, and didn’t waste a second brainstorming a name for the pathetic bundle in her arms.

Before Dr. Sinclair severed the umbilical cord and stitched her up, Mom gave a shout-out to Dad over the hospital’s public address system (fathers paced alone in waiting rooms back then), adding to my young life the psychological insult of a crummy name on top of the minor injuries of a traumatic birth.

“What do you think, Frank? We’ve always loved the names Rose and Teresa, and then there’s Angela…”

“I don’t know, babe. I’ve been burning up the linoleum out here, trying to come up with the perfect—”

“Frank, wait! It just came to me! It’s like heaven opened up and a bolt of lightening shot through my soul, and I know—I just know!”

“Don’t tell me, Chrissie! Let me guess…”

And then, as if they’d individually seen apparitions of the venerable saint herself in the textured covers of the sound system’s speakers, they shouted to each other in the ecstasy of one voice, like deep calls to deep, or—in their cases—like shallow calls to shallow.

“Dympna!”

Upon hearing that single word, a whole hospital full of people who’d been listening in on this discussion burst into gales of uncontrolled laughter, but Mom and Dad simply thought that the angels in heaven had come to rejoice over their sweet baby girl.

Yeah, that’s the way I picture it happening when I’m feeling generous and forgiving which, you’ve probably guessed, isn’t often.

If St. Dympna’s claim to fame is shaky on the saintly websites, you should see how she rates on the name-your-baby sites.

“Dympna. Female. Irish. From the Irish name Damhnait, meaning fit or eligible.”

Well, okay. First of all, there’s no getting around the fact that the Irish spelling (and pronunciation?) of the name looks, and probably sounds, suspiciously like a curse word. There’s a good reason for that, don’t you think?

Now, about the name’s supposed meaning: The only famous Dympna-of-old—my erstwhile namesake—was certainly eligible. I’ll give her that. She was so eligible, in fact, that her loony father, an Irish King, tried to take her for his wife because she reminded him so much, in his unabated grief, of her beautiful but recently deceased mother. Dympna fled to Belgium from her father’s insanity, which is how her fitness came in handy, but she still ended up getting martyred for resisting his advances.

Fit and eligible, indeed. In my limited experience, I’ve found that headless chicks—no matter how the baby-naming websites may lead you to imagine otherwise—are rarely as fit and eligible after the axe as they were before.

“Out of 5673 votes,” one site proclaims, “0% have this name themselves, 0% wish with all their souls that they’d been blessed enough to be given this name, and 0% chose this name for their own precious child.”

Those stats are hard to believe, huh?

If Mom and Dad had a scant ounce of mercy between them, they would have added the name Mary in there somewhere, like other families did who chose off-beat names for their offspring. You know the drill: Mary Honoria, Mary Philomena, Mary Virginie.

When it came to naming little girls, Mary covered a multitude of sins.

If they’d only gone with that magnificent moniker, my childhood might have been normal, like Mary Beth’s and Mary Kathleen’s and Mary Alice’s. Even the twins who lived down the block, Mary Janice and Mary Jeanette, got off easy.

I, though, entered Miss Pendergast’s kindergarten class and became the immediate object of relentless name-related peer-review, tantamount to taunting.

“What’s a Dympna?” Dougie Aylward proposed marriage to me on the first day of school, armed with a fake diamond ring from the lid of his mama’s floor wax container. But our young love was fraught from the beginning with the misery of emotional abuse. “Do I dip my Lay’s potato chips in it? Bet you can’t eat just one!”

Why, oh why, didn’t my parents give me the chance to ditch Dympna once and forevermore and go overboard for the Blessed Mother?

I would have done it, too. I would have proclaimed my devotion to Mary with my whole being and consecrated my entire future to her renown, if the old folks had only given me an out. But did my parents think their actions through to the likeliest outcome and do the right thing?

Not on my life.

No, for some reason known only to Mom, Dad, and the thousands of Patron Saints of the Mentally Stable they could have named me for, they lacked the type of common Catholic parenting sense necessary to baptize me Mary Dympna or even Dympna Mary.

Instead, they named me Dympna Shayne.

Shayne, you understand, isn’t a saint’s name, which means they might as well have spared themselves the effort it took to dream it up. It’s not like a nun back in the day would have disregarded the church’s naming traditions by actually calling me Shayne when I was a fledgling catechism student at St. Elizabeth’s Grade School.

In order to be baptized, either your first or middle name had to be a saint’s name. From infancy on, whenever you were on the premises of an institution operated by the church, you had better be prepared to be addressed by whichever of your names passed muster.

I’m pretty sure Sisters Cecilia Gertrude, Bernadette Paul, and Agnes Irene—themselves personally in cumulative possession of half the saints’ names in the known universe—could have been, for a much milder offense than calling me Shayne, put out to pasture at the Holy Family Home for Weary Sisters of the Order of St. Joseph.

So until I entered public high school, I was stuck with Dympna, a second or third-tier saint by even the most inclusive of Catholic standards, but a bona fide saint, nonetheless. That’s just the way it worked. It didn’t matter that by some accounts, her life’s story might be only a legend. It was of marginal and incidental interest that perhaps she’d never lived at all, much less had her Olympic sprinting career cut short for disagreeing to become her deranged father’s second wife.

It didn’t make an iota of difference that she was merely the patron saint of the mentally ill, or the patron saint of the merely mentally ill—only that she’d been duly canonized and remained, posthumously speaking, in consistent good standing with whomever it is who follows up on stuff like this.

And if Dympna’s a lousy name with which to punish a defenseless child, Shayne’s not much better.

Not only is Shayne not a saint’s name, it’s not a girl’s name, either. Or even much of a boy’s name, for that matter. I’ve searched a legion of sources, and I’ve accumulated all the variations of John-with-a-Celtic-twist in existence, whether male or female: Ian, Sean, Shannon, Shawn, Shane, Shawna, and maybe even Shania (like I’m lucky enough that Shania and I ever the Twain shall meet—ha!).

Rarely have I found a reference to the name Shayne, and never for a girl.

All I can think is that my parents went through a linguistic phase during which they became overly fond of the letter Y. And because of them, I’ve spent a lifetime being overly obsessed with the question why.

Weren’t three boys in the family—Patrick, Brendan, and James, with handsome saints’ names, one and all—enough for them? Mom and Dad weren’t sports-oriented enough to form a softball team and no ranch hands were needed to take over the family farm, since the homestead consisted of a duplex and a dog.

Why couldn’t they name me Bridget and be done with it?

And if one of my two names had to be in honor of a patron saint, why Dympna? I’ve asked my immigrant father any number of times for an explanation, and he just lowers his gaze, shakes his head, and gets all misty-eyed on me.

“You’ll understand someday, Dimps. I promise.”

Understand the decision of a man who calls his own daughter Dimps? Sure, I will. About as much chance of me understanding an error of judgment like that as there would be if he called me Pimples or Thunder Thighs or Cellulite.

All I understand is that Dad must have been drunk if he’s the guilty party, if he’s the one who suggested the name to my long-laboring, anesthetized mother. Or, I don’t know, maybe smoking one of those “It’s A Girl!” pink-banded cheap cigars stunted his growth in the Compassionate Naming Department. 

As a full-grown woman, I won’t allow a single soul besides my father to call me Dympna—or any of its many darling derivatives like Dimples and Dimwit. And you know what? I’ve got ongoing issues with Shayne, too.

Ongoing issues, and a lot of unanswered questions.

Legally, I’m Dympna Shayne, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that, at least as long as my parents are alive, I’ll never have any fewer Ys than I have right now.

But by the time this story’s told, as St. Dympna and Shania Twain are my witnesses, I intend to have far fewer whys.

Posted by Katy on 10/16/06 at 03:08 PM
Fallible Comments...
  1. And I thought my name was a cross to bear (as a child). Sorry, I have no ideas for the story of Dympna Shayne but I can't wait to see what you and others come up with! Thanks for the entertainment.
    Posted by Sabine  on  10/16/06  at  03:40 PM
  2. Ooo, please continue! I don't have any ideas, but I definitely want to read it. And, incidentally, I knew a girl in high school named Shane.
    Posted by Carrie K.  on  10/16/06  at  11:47 PM
  3. I can so relate. :-)
    Posted by Suzan  on  10/17/06  at  01:18 PM
  4. I'm intrigued - why?
    Posted by Tess  on  10/17/06  at  04:03 PM
  5. I know a family who lost a daughter named Shayne to cancer. She was between 16-18 years old.
    Posted by Kcaarin  on  10/18/06  at  03:11 PM
  6. Point of interest; (regarding Shayne and her family) the family was very rich from having started a garbage business but fell apart after Shayne died. The father went into drugs (I don't know if he had a problem before or not) the mother went deeper into her faith. They ended up in a divorce. The one son followed after his father and got into drugs (he was about 15-16) the other daughter retreated into herself, the other son followed his mother and found a deeper faith and the oldest son had a schizophrenic breakdown. (there were 5 children altogether) The interesting thing now is after a long battle of fighting the Lord, the 16 year old son is now following the Lord and free from drugs, although he still fights with a wicked temper. It's a great story of how the Lord, in His great Sovereignty allowed pain for His glory.
    Posted by Kcaarin  on  10/18/06  at  03:43 PM
  7. Katy, what are you planning for this story? It sounds like an interesting start. I'm personally out of ideas, but do let us know how it progresses.

    I can relate to the heroine, having grown up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood.
    Posted by Suzan  on  10/20/06  at  11:44 AM
  8. Sabine--I absolutely love your name. Is there a Saint Sabine?

    Carrie K--Your encouragement is a treasure! :)

    Tess--I wish I knew!! ;)

    Kcaarin--So sad about Shayne and her family and all they went through. My current novel (not the thing I've posted here) deals with the death of a child and how it affects the family long-term. I am glad in your story, there is redemption!

    Suzan--You know what? I picture the heroine about 30 years old, but she looks like you! Although I wrote this before we reconnected at ACFW....The title of this story is Citizen Shayne, about a woman who goes to Ireland--mad at the whole country because of the Dympna thing but needing some answers--and ends up pursuing her Irish citizenship (for a specific reason unknown to me at this time). The story is about the longing for belonging--I think. :) But, hey. I'm hoping NaNo will get the ideas flowing.....
    Posted by Katy  on  10/20/06  at  01:44 PM
  9. When the outer layers of skin shed (as they do continuously), the dead skin cells left behind may become 'glued' together by the sebum. This causes the blockage in the pore, especially when the skin becomes thicker at puberty. The sebaceous glands produce more sebum which builds up behind the blockage,
    Posted by Skin Pigmentatio  on  09/01/10  at  07:45 AM
    10. Page 1 of 1 pages
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