AN: A brief note on Donna's daughter's name and where it might have come from in advance of next week's broadcast. Reviews are very welcome.
She holds this baby – her baby – her life – in her arms and looks.
She, who it seems has done so little. She, who has cast herself against the world time and again.
At last – something to be proud of – and what a thing this little girl is.
She feels sometimes there's something, just below the surface, waiting to be noticed. Not as a dream slipping away, but of one unremembered, undiscovered, waiting.
It comes to her
Her whole life, Donna has fallen in line. Get through school, get a qualification, get a job, get another job and then another. Meet a bloke, and then another. Forget the bloke, and then another. Meet the bloke, marry him. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing remarkable, nothing worth mentioning. Donna rests uneasy against the negativity of her own narrative – there have been great days, great nights and plenty of laughing. She's had a good family, good friends and good love her whole life. She is lucky, she knows, luckier than many. Happy memories are plentiful and annoyances have been few. But sometimes, the thought has hit her, creeping into the back of her mind: is this all it is? Is this all I am? All I will be?
And the answer is no, has been no, until this moment. This moment here, and her looking down at the babe in arms.
She looks at her child, born in love, who will live in love, this child who will know and be love. This child, unnamed still. Every name seems too ordinary, too normal, too unremarkable and too Donna to bestow on this miracle.
And then, it comes.
The thought comes fully formed, unbidden, new and heretofore considered, and yet so defined, so heartfelt and so unnervingly familiar that it seems she has always known this would be her daughter's name.
Her name was Rose.
She swirls the thought around her mind. It seems so achingly familiar and yet she can't place it. The tense is wrong, the past tense of it is wrong here and now where everything seems geared toward bright and beautiful future, but it seems so complete, so right. She holds the thought, pensive and in pause before she lets it go. It lasts however, and Donna is left to shake her head bemusedly and retire the thought to live amongst the many other seemingly abstract thoughts with which she has been graced over the years.
But that voice, so sure, so familiar, so hers, and yet something she just cannot unravel. A man's voice; strong, certain and full. Not that of her Sean, not her dear departed Dad, not even Grandad, but a voice she knows as she knows her own – yet still cannot place. His words sing to her, said in earnest, convincing of their meaning and pressed with an urgency to communicate their message, not of their own words per say, but of the feeling behind them, the sheer force of that which goes with them in this one name.
Rose. Her daughter, her child. She will be loved by so many. And Donna knows now, as she feels she has known for always: this name is love.