Great Babas in History

Regarding my relationship with Daisy and Heidi, I am frequently asked a variety of questions - is she your daughter, are the mom and you together, why do you call her Daisy if that is not really her name - but most often of all, I think, is: Why 'Baba'?

'Baba' is a traditional honorific from both Hindi and Urdu that can mean father, grandfather or just 'older man'. It is also a Chinese word for father, and, most appropriately I think, a Slavic word for Grandmother. Heidi spent some time in India years ago and shared with me a story of a young Indian boy who would refer to her friend B.Z. as 'Baba' while attempting to sell him rugs.

It took a while for the three of us to determine what my role in Daisy's life was going to be, whether I was going to continue living with them or move out, be a father or just a friend, so it was difficult to decide what this little baby (who was learning to speak so very, very quickly) should call me. I'd been 'Silly Man' for the early days, but I knew that wasn't going to stick. The more I thought of ideas, the more Baba just seemed to feel comfortable and right.

And to show how appropriate the name really is, please allow me to present some of the finest Babas in history (present company excluded.)

• Baba Yaga: Baba Yaga is perhaps the most terrifying witch in history, and this is including Morgan Le Fay and those bearded broads from MacBeth. She has iron teeth, a rapacious appetite (sometimes for human flesh), and travels around in a giant flying mortar (pestle serves as propulsion.) Instead of a gingerbread house or a castle or anything traditional like that, Baba Yaga lives in a cottage (surrounded by a fence made of bones and skulls) deep in the forest that has two gigantic chicken legs and can walk itself around from place to place. She has various servants, including three horsemen, White, Black, and Red, and may or may not have two older sisters (who are, Foremannishly, also named Baba Yaga.) Baba Yaga is a character of Russian folklore, which means she is what Stalin's parents used to scare him into behaving. Let that be a lesson to you.

• Ali Baba: Ali Baba was the son of a wealthy Persian merchant whose brother screwed him out of his inheritance. One day while out collecting firewood to sell, he overhears a group of forty thieves discussing the secret of a magic cave full of treasure. Needless to say, wackiness ensues, and the scheming brother is murdered by the thieves, all forty of the thieves are killed by a slave girl named Morgiana, and in the end, Ali Baba gets the treasure, his inheritance, and the undoubtedly smoking hot (if moderately homicidal) slave girl Morgiana as his bride. So, you know, he did all right.

• Baba Ganoush: A dip made of roasted eggplant. But we can't all be winners.