Whitney & Whitman, Mother & Father (Part 2)

Biological parents are in most cases easy to locate, and once you've reached the age they were at when they had you (me, this year), then they're pretty easy to figure out. I'm not saying all the mysteries of life dissolve like the unveiling at the end of a "Scooby Doo" episode, but for once I feel like I can put my childhood behind me. There are plenty of other topics to obsess over, such as: Who are my real parents?
    By "real" of course, I mean spiritual, supernatural, artistic. And by parents I mean those two figures -- one male, one female -- that contribute equally to the genetic makeup of your innermost soul. As is the biological case, you can't choose your real parents. And they don't choose you. At some point, I believe, they choose each other, but it is not a carefully arranged courtship. It is a heated seduction. It is the sliding open of a door and a look. There eyes meet, and everything -- your birth, your life, your death -- is foretold.
    My real parents are Whitney Houston and Walt Whitman. Names are everything, and what's in a name matters as much as what that name names. I think it's significant that my parents' names share the letters "W-H-I-T" in that order, and that word spells "whit," meaning "a small amount." There is literally a small amount of Whitney Houston in Walt Whitman, and likewise there is a small amount of him in her. It's also meaningful that "whit" and "wit" are homonyms, the latter being fit to describe both my mental sharpness generally and my playful aptitude with words specifically.
    As their real child, I represent not only the manifestation of the "whit" my parents share but also what they don't. From Whitman I have inherited the right to be called a "man," despite my emotional kinship with so many women. My mother gave me "Houston," the major city nearest to where I was born, and where I currently live. I will not live in Houston for the rest of my life, but as the location of my first real apartment, real job, and real experiment with adulthood, it will always constitute a home the way other future habitations won't. The remaining letters from my parents' names, "N-E-Y" and "W-A-L-T," can be recombined in a number of ways to form significant milestones in my life so far -- "YALE" and "NY" are two -- and, I can imagine, symbols of adventures to come (maybe an "LA" or a "NEAL"?).

    Of course, being the offspring of Whitman and Whitney has more to do than with just name games and letterology. In this series of posts, I will explore the ways in which my parents' creative talents, textual nuances, imaginative spirits, sufferings, wrongdoings, and celebrities  -- as artists and as human beings (not to force a difference between the two) -- constitute a heritage distinctly my own. Even if I have a brother or sister out there somewhere, s/he is not Whitney and Whitman's child the same way I am. Indeed, we are probably as vastly autonomous as myself and my biological siblings. I want to write about my parents and their relationship not merely for vanity's sake (although, as many have said about my father, when is vanity not at play?), but so that I can share with people the Whitney and Whitman whom I know. They are special artists who belong to me in a special way. And when viewed side by side, in the admiring yet selfish light of lineage, their luminescent glow reveals special truths.