Today I learned to write my name again. I wanted to remember what it was like. I didn't use a fat pencil or a crayon. Instead I used a computer and a mouse. It took me a long and tedious time, just as it did the first time around. I had to work to get each of the letters formed right. That was important. Time was not. It's my name. I want it to look just so. I want it to look like me. My name is the first word most people know about me. It’s one of the pictures that they’ll keep in their head when I’m not there. When they think of me, it's one of the pictures they'll see.
They say if I change my name it doesn't mean a thing, but we know that it means a whole lot. It means more than if I change how I look, what I wear, or what I do.
My name is the first word my parents called me. It’s the first I learned to say. It’s the word on every page about me, on every page that I write. And when I feel unjustly treated, I hear myself say, “He didn’t even know my name, not really.”
Names are the most important words that we know.
Today I learned to write my name again.
It humbled and exhilarated me with the sheer potential of growth.
−me strauss Letting me be
4 comments:
Hi Liz!
Lovely name.
and a wonderful post. :)
(P.S. my name, when loosely translated from Chinese, means "New Victory". my parents hope that i will be successful in whatever i do (the Victory part), and i am the eldest child (the New part).
certainly much better than the horrid dsnake1 nick i used for my writings. :D )
Ah Dsnake,
I've come to have such warm and thoughtful images and illusions about my red visitor who brings me words of wisdom and kindness. I think he must be a most flexible sort able to weave his way through the white spaces of thoughts and feelings to find out what's behind them. Then to wrap himself around them with a protection that others cannot manage.
Sometimes I look at my signigture and I don't recognize it. I wonder who that person is and what their story is but it just doesn't look like me.
Trée
Names are like that. I feel that way sometimes when I look at my own signature. Worse, when I look down and see that I've written my maiden name that I haven't used for 23 years! What does that mean? I do that about once a year when I'm really spacey.
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