Easter Revelation

Easter Sunday brought hoards to sacrament meeting, but the numbers had dwindled by Sunday School to a handful of familiar happy faces. I took my place at the pulpit with scriptures open, ready to blow some minds with the profundity of my Easter Musings. I couldn’t see that there was anyone new to introduce and I said as much, when a young lady peeked from behind a man seated in front of her. She was new, as was her husband who had also managed to hide himself behind another. They introduced themselves as somebody somebody bla bla bla, and this was their son, Beck.

Pause. Should I say something? I’ll try it.

“Beck. Is that short for something?”
“Nope. Just Beck”
“Great. Just wondering.”

Pause.

“I ask because my friends and I did this play wherein there was a character whose name was Beck and he had a recurring nightmare that it was short for Rebecca.”

Class titters. New couple looks shocked.

“You put it on at BYU a few years ago” says the goatied man holding the child named Beck. This is not a question. He’s telling me that he saw the play.

“We named our son after the man in that play.”

Blink. Blink.

I can’t close my mouth. Nothing comes out. I don’t have words for this moment in my life. I motion to the boy, and then back to myself, and then back to the boy. I leave my hand in the air and blink again. The class is roaring and I can’t tell if it’s because of the surreality of the event, or because their exhaustively verbose teacher is finally speachless.

The man speaks up again to tell me he is Tom Hiatt’s brother and I can only sort of hear him out of the fog I’m swimming in. And while Tom was in the play, he was not Beck. I wish Tony were here. He may be the only other person on earth who could feel what I am feeling.

Later in the hall, the man presented his child to me and said to the boy, “Beck, meet your namesake.” And I wanted to cry. One day, somebody is going to have to tell him that his name is, indeed, short for Rebecca.