A Rocky by any other name

By Evie Gawenda

My daughter wonders whether in this new life, I have grown more eccentric. She also wonders whether I am just getting old. I fear she might be right on both counts.

 I am well known amongst my friends and family for giving everyone a nickname. I am a nickname expert for humans and for dogs. Often the names are nonsensical or at least they end up that way. I could list some of them, but they wouldn’t mean anything because the key with nicknames is the tone and context of their use. With dogs, the nickname is almost always a function of love.

Names are important in my family, both real names and nicknames. My brother is named after my dad’s father and I am named after dad’s father’s niece. I often think if I have a child, a little girl, I will call her Rita after dad’s sister. Rita was my favourite aunt.  From early on I didn’t want to be called by my name.  I chose Cookie, and so I was called, until I was three years old. Everyone knew me as Cookie Gawenda. At three I decided that I wanted to be Evie- not Cookie, not Eve but Evie. I like to rename people. Dad was Bob for a while and then Bill and then Pops. My mum is moo moo but has been known as mooks and shnitzel.  My brother, at the moment is shnops. Of course it is inevitable that my nicknaming has rubbed off on those around me and I have especially influenced dad on this. He may not admit it but he has become a master of nicknames thanks to me.

When my brother and I drove Rocky home from that little pet shop in Bulleen, Rocky crying all the way, we knew that mum had her heart set on calling him Astro. She’d lost the naming argument over our two jack russells. My brother and I had won- they were Pluto and Lolly. But I don’t think I ever once called them by their names. Pluto became Pluty- the obvious choice I know but then much more obscure names popped out like Leenitz and Bulu. He was even called Primo Levi for a while. 

Lolly started off as Lilly and Lu Lu and then as she grew old and blind, my brother started to call her Yiddish names like Chocho Chele and Chocho Machtche, two of dad’s aunts who we never met. Chocho (which is Yiddish for auntie)  Chele owned a cabaret in St Kilda and had brought my family out to Australia after the war, and Chocho Machtche  was the very eccentric aunt who lived with my dad and my grandfather after my grandmother died. All of these names were given them in a rush of affection.

We debated Rocky’s name for days- Astro and Milton and Leonard (after Leonard Cohen) were considered and rejected and finally, we settled on my brother’s suggestion. Rocky. I had no objection because in the end he would be named and re-named by me many times, this tiny black puppy, with soft white paws and the face of a little angel.

 Almost immediately, he became rockstar, rockwurst, the rock, boy, little boy, cookie and monster. Then one day I heard dad call him Sutzkever. That used to be dad’s name for me. I had no idea what it even meant. My Yiddish is pretty good but for some reason I thought Sutzkever meant sour cream. As it turns out,  he is a famous poet. Dad called me Sutzie mostly when he was tearing up after I had sung him a Yiddish song that I knew would reduce him to tears. Given all that, I don’t know how Rocky became Sutzkever. Perhaps dad believed Rocky was a Yiddish poet in his last life. Dad often used to say that Pluto was so intense that he must have been a poet or a writer in his past life. But Rocky doesn’t really have a tortured vibe. I think dad has just gone soft in his old age. The mere mention of the Yiddish songwriter Mordechai Gebertig makes him choke up.

Recently, we were looking through photos of Rocky for dad’s blog. One of the photos has dad holding Rocky like a child squashed up against his face.

The others were of Rocky walking with dad in the morning and sitting with him quietly while he watched the swans. There were really cute ones of Rocky and dad playing ball in the shallows at the beach and as we looked through, dad clucked at each one, saying how much Rocky had grown and how beautiful and majestic he was now. “ What a boy!” he exclaimed.  `Have you ever seen a better dog?’

It was the photo of Rocky squashed up against dad’s face that moved me most. It reminded me of a photo of dad and me that I’ve been thinking about lately. I’m about one year old and dad is younger than I am now. He has a beard and dark wavy hair and his face is pressed up to mine. My hands are clasped around his nose and we’re looking at each other lovingly, just the way Rocky and dad were looking at each other in the squashed face photograph. I remembered how dad had once been very critical of those who treated their dogs like children. There are moments when I wonder what all this means. Is it that dad’s new life has made him more eccentric than he was in his old life? Is he getting old and reverting to childhood? Is all this normal?

And then I think about Rocky. Rocky and dad.  Me and dad.  I think dad wants a baby in his old age. He does keep saying that babies seem to like him a lot, in a way they never liked him when he was young. Perhaps that’s what this Rocky and Gawenda thing is all about.  So Rocky becomes Sutzie and Shmootzy and all these nicknames he once used when he was calling out to me, have now become Rocky’s nicknames. The old man wants a grandchild. I wonder whether that’s what this is all about. It makes perfect sense. He used to hassle my brother and me about having babies. He hassles us far less now that Rocky is his best friend. I wonder, when he has a grandchild, whether Rocky and Gawenda will survive.