I often tell my daughter Margaret the story of her naming…
I was pregnant, and very scared. I’d lost a baby before your brother, at twenty weeks. And I was scared I’d lose you too. So, I prayed: ‘Let this baby live and I’ll name it after one of your saints! Tell me which.’
Later, a knock at the door. I open it to a smiling face: ‘Hello, I’m your midwife. My name’s Margaret Clitherow.’
Margaret Clitherow!
The Pearl of York, pressed to death on Ouse Bridge for holding Mass above her shop. I’d lived opposite her shrine for years, during my time at York University. I knew her.
You were born on the eve of her Feast Day. At the hour, actually, when she was sewing her own shroud, praying before they came to take her away.
That’s not all.
Rewind nine months. I was practising visualisation: ‘Picture your womb as a velvet-lined box, your egg as a precious pearl nestled in the velvet…’ After, I prayed. ‘Will I conceive? Give me a sign…’ Yes, a sign. ‘Send me a pearl.’
So selfish! To be demanding, bargaining.
But next day, at church, when I take your brother to Sunday School, the teacher says, ‘Today we’re going to read Jesus’s parable of the Great Pearl. I want you each to take one of these.’ She opens a box. It’s overflowing with pearls.
μαργαριτάρι (margaritári) – pearl in Greek.
But that’s not all.
Fast forward some years to us visiting for the first time your grandmother’s childhood church. My mother, who died sixteen years before you were born. There in the stained glass, Margaret Clitherow. There, in an alcove, a statue of Margaret Clitherow. My mother as a girl, dreaming beside that Margaret, under her stained light, all those years ago…
MARIA