“Where do you find your ideas?” is the question I am most frequently asked as a writer. The answer is, I don’t find my ideas; they find me. Then, more often than not, they remain hidden and unknown, biding their time—sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, and sometimes even for decades—until just the right moment occurs for them to emerge.

One book that had an extremely long gestation period is the recently published Joyful Song: A Naming Story, which celebrates a Jewish naming ceremony that takes place on the first Shabbat after a baby girl is born.

I could say that the idea for this story took root when I was one week old, the day my father stood on the raised platform, called a bima, of our Brooklyn synagogue, holding me in his arms while the rabbi blessed me, announced my name, and welcomed me to the world. I was named for my mother’s father, Louis, who had died three months before I was born. So where were my mother and grandmother during the service? They were sitting in the front row, looking up at my father and me, but not allowed to stand next to us, as this took place more than sixty years ago, when women were not allowed up on the bima at our Conservative shul. (You might even say that a baby feminist was born in that moment, but that’s another story.)

Flash forward twenty-five years. I am living on a farm in Denmark, rising every morning at 5:30 to call the cows in from the fields for their morning milking. In the afternoon, I pluck ripe strawberries from our garden and bring them to the woman who lives on the farm next door and is eight months pregnant. “What names have you picked out for the baby?” I ask her. She tilts her head, puzzled. “What do you mean?” she asks. I explain that back home, most people start thinking about names the moment they find out they are pregnant. “But what if the name isn’t right?” she asks me, explaining that she won’t name her baby until the child is at least two years old, when their personality has emerged. Now it is my turn to tilt my head in confusion. “But what will you call your baby in the meantime?” She laughs. “Oh, you know. Little Sweet Cheeks. Little Snot Nose. Little Dumpling. Little Darling…”

Flash forward another twenty-five years. I am sitting in synagogue in Northampton, Massachusetts, where I have made my home. Towards the end of the service, the rabbi calls a couple up to the bima. Two moms with their brand new beautiful baby daughter rise to stand beside the rabbi. The baby girl’s name is announced and the family is welcomed, blessed, and embraced. My, how times have changed since my own naming ceremony! Tears of joy rain down my cheeks as I join the entire congregation in song, congratulating baby Ruby and her two moms on their very special day.

Ten years later, these three experiences converged and showed up one morning when I picked up my pen. I don’t know why they arose on this particular day; that is the mystery and magic of being a writer. If a writer is lucky, on any given day, a story will come along and tap her on the shoulder. And so, I created a little boy named Zachary, who lives with his two moms and his brand new baby sister. The story takes place on the first Shabbat of the baby’s life, the day of her naming ceremony, just as on the first Shabbat of my life, my parents brought me to the synagogue for my naming ceremony. On their walk, several neighbors admire the baby and ask Zachary and his mothers her name. The neighbors are told several nicknames: Little Babka, Shayneh Maideleh (Yiddish for “Beautiful Girl” and my own baby nickname) and Snuggle Bunny, endearments similar to the nicknames the Danish mother called her baby long ago. And finally, in my book, the whole family stands on the bima to be blessed, just as the family in my Northampton synagogue was invited to do, just as my own mother and grandmother wished they had been able to do. 

I am always grateful when an idea arrives and shapes itself into a story. In the meantime, I ready myself. As Louis Pasteur so famously said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” And the only way I know how to prepare my mind—and heart—is to put pen to paper and wait for the magic and mystery to begin.