Writing desperately

Sometimes I feel the need to write...desperately. This is one of those times. And despite having four children awake...that will undoubtedly find that I am the one to solve some sort of issue...I am going to soldier on.

What is this about? Renaming. Identity. Again...I come back to identity. My aunt sent a photo album where she had compiled photos of her mom and dad...her brothers and sister...some, of family members I have never met. I looked through it yesterday, recognizing a lot of the images...but not all. Smiling to myself at the connection to the past.

Until.

I got towards the back of the album and came across a more recent picture of my mother. And I gasped. Can you imagine finding yourself gasping at the image of the woman that bore you? You probably can't. I felt shame. And guilt. I felt pity. I felt grief. I felt tears. I feel tears. I lingered and moved on.

Moving on is what I do best. I seem to have a knack for it...cultivated by the necessities of life.

Later, Iris flipped through the pictures...happy to find a picture of herself. When she paused and looked at me with animated horror I knew where she was. "This is a scary picture", said my four year old daughter. There is no filter there yet. She was reacting. So I had to explain who this person was, "That is my mom...from California...she has lived a tough life." That has become the byline of that photo. The boys have seen some photos of her before, and I think vaguely remember what she looks like. Still, Josiah stopped there as well. Wondering aloud why she looked so different...the comparison is hard to escape when you can see someone at age four...young and new...and then older, after a life filled with loss and homelessness.

As Josiah and I looked through the album he noticed the name. Kenna. He knows her as Marilyn. I have always wondered about this name change...and even smirked a bit to myself. Tonight...it made me sad. I remembered all the names I have gone by. Harman or Harmon...I didn't even know which was the correct spelling. Krienke. Vincelli. Negaard.Then married into the ever enduring Smith name. And in all those names where was I? Who was I? What is a name?

Identity.

A name is everything and nothing. For my mom, a woman with few choices in her life. She chose the name Marilyn. Perhaps I will never know the reason she dislikes her given name, Kenna...maybe it really is because she thinks it sounds masculine. She told me she likes the name Marilyn because it is feminine. Why shouldn't she get this one thing in life? Something beautiful in an otherwise tragic life.

This family. If you could see the faces of these people...smiling. You wouldn't know. So I tell my children the story of these people...and it is a sad one. "This is the uncle I met in California...their mother left him with a family and never told anyone where he was...he found us all a few years ago." and  "This is my mom's mother...my grandmother...she left them"...and hearing Iris pipe up, "You would never do that".

No, I wouldn't.