Friday, March 9, 2012

Tangled Names

You know how when you say a word too much, you start to forget what it means? Everyone does this. It's really fun if you do it with your own name. You find yourself sitting there thinking: Who is that? How can that be the name of anything? How can that have been my name my whole life and I'm only now just hearing how ridiculous it is?! Or at least I do. My name is not ridiculous. It's not terribly common for my particular age group. It is related to a much more common name which I get called quite often and it grates. Oddly, though, my real name doesn't get used much.

My mom calls me by it occasionally, but as we mostly talk on phones with caller ID, she already knows it's me and just says "Hi." or "Hi honey."

My dad rarely ever called me by my full name. He was the only one who was ever allowed to shorten it or make a diminutive out of it. He also called my by my sister's name or sometimes my brother's as parents are sometimes apt to do.

My kids call me Mama, sometimes Mom. Never Mommy. Sometimes they call me by my first name. It sounds so funny in their little mouths, so I let them. I don't hold to old notions of disrespect and it is, in fact, my name. They probably use it more than anyone, but even they don't use it that often.

My punk-face junior high students call me Mrs. and I let them. They think I'm old and horrible because I have gray hair and children and no iPhone and I make them read things for understanding. No one else calls me Mrs. That is someone else's name.

The parents, teachers and students at my daughter's school call me jBird's Mom, which suits me fine. She is far more memorable than I am and any capacity in which those people know me, it is unnecessary for them to know me personally, only the function I serve as jBird's mom. Ditto my son's school. Except the children there are mostly at an age where they don't know anyone's name anyway, or care. And I avoid their parents because they frighten me with loud baby talk and fur coats.

I have a friend who calls me Roxy, a friend who calls me Buttercup, a friend who calls me Esther, another who calls me Special K. All very old nicknames from different origins, times and places. They are perhaps the only ones besides my husband who have had nicknames adhere to me.

My husband calls me Lou. I call my husband Lou. It's a habit started in our first year of marriage. It comes from One Legged Lou - the name of the finger I use to poke my husband when he's sleeping, just to startle him. I'm annoying that way. It also comes from Lou Dominguez - the man whose mail my mother-in-law started to receive after living in her house for well over 20 years. We created a back story for him and my mother-in-law that was profoundly funny. At least we thought so.

We have called each other Lou so long that we forget when we say it in front of other people and they are surprised. When both kids were first learning to talk, Lou was among their first words. My jBird would stand in her crib and holler "Llllooooouuuu!" in the sweetest little voice if ever I dared to put her down for a nap in that little baby cage. The Hooligan was much more terse. He would point to me and say "Wou!" and then point to his daddy and say "Wou!"

My dad tried to call my husband Lou once and it was so awkward that we all just blushed silently for a minute and then never spoke of it again.

We knew before we were ever pregnant with the jBird what her name would be. The Hooligan's name was not solidified until a few hours after he was born. We carefully chose their names for very specific reasons and then after they were born proceeded to call them by a series of nicknames anyway. My sister-in-law said that jBird wouldn't know what her name was because we never called her by it. But she did. Very early on, she did. Same for the Hooligan.

I protect our names online because you never know who might be reading or what they might do with the information they do read. I find this a little silly and paranoid, but I'm told it's a good idea. I will be silly if it means protecting my children. I am silly for far less important reasons sometimes. So online I am Tangled Lou, decidedly silly. Tangled because that is the state of my mind, my tongue and my writing a lot of times. Tangled because of my knitting obsession. Tangled because the play on words is too irresistible with the Bob Dylan song, Tangled Up In Blue.

But somehow in this state of tangled names, with each their own source, their own piece of me, there in the center of it all is just Me. The Me that no matter how much I repeat it, does not begin to sound ridiculous. The Me that friends from grade school still recognize. The Me in whom my mom still sees shadows of the baby I was. The Me that I recognize no matter what the outward circumstances of my life. The Me that does not change. This is the Me that I embrace with all of her flaws and idiosyncratic ways, with her brilliance and her silliness, with her monstrous thoughts and tender heart, with her knowing and her wonder, with her naivete and her wisdom, with her intensity and heat, with her hideousness and beauty. This is the Me that has been there for as long as I can remember, the Me that no one can touch. And honestly, I don't really know how to pronounce her name.  

35 comments:

  1. I'm so glad that Tara introduced me to your blog, Lou. Your writing is wonderful, and even though I've only been visiting for a couple of weeks you are so warm that I already feel I know you.

    I have a million names for the people I love, especially the kids. (My husband was Penelope about ten minutes after I met him; I should have known then that I would marry him.)

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    1. I'm so glad Tara introduced you, too! I'm glad you're enjoying reading. I like your blog, too!

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  2. Hey, TL, this is great! It likely will inspire a similar post from my mind. I have name stories and I need to tell them! Thanks! Happy weekend!

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    1. Happy weekend to you, too! Names are fun, aren't they?

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  3. And can you tell me how you got rid of the word verification piece? I really want to take that off mine and I have searched the blogger info and I can't seem to find the way out.....

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  4. That last line, especially, gave me chills. I really should've put more thought into the blog nicknames I gave my kids and family, but I just went with the path of least resistance.

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    1. I like your blog nicknames. They are straightforward, not all cutesy (mine are too saccharin sometimes, even for me!) and very easy to abbreviate when need be!

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  5. I am sure there are even strange people who will begin to do identity theft using nick names, sad.

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    1. Strange people, indeed. It seems like so much trouble, but alas...

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  6. Love the last paragraph! There is that core part of me that is unchanging, that feels ageless, young and old at the same time, and it blows my mind to think I could feel the same at 12 and at 80. I never refer to my kids by name, although my daughter recently told me that was silly. I don't know, I just never felt like putting a name with their faces!

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    1. That sort of blows my mind, too. It further blows it when I look at my small children and know that they will have this part of them that will always be the same and recognizable even when they are adults.

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  7. Ah, names. I have my online name and my "real life" name, and as my online writing life grows the lines are starting to blur and I find myself more and more confused as to who is the "real" me. Double the confusion when I meet people in "real life" who know me only by my writing name! The things we do in the name of online privacy...

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    1. I'm an extremely private person, but also pretty naive, so I think I did the whole name thing a little wrong with an online persona, but I have general faith that most people are decent. It does get a little confusing when it intersects with "real life"!

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  8. I like my name. Even though there were always more than one of "me" in school because it was "the name" the year of my birth, I still like my name. My mom decided to change it up a little, so it is spelled with a y instead of an i. I like that. I especially like the way my first and middle name sound together. I don't think the pair would sound as lyrical, though, if my first name were spelled with an i ins tread of a y. I'm glad my mom thought of that. :)
    As far as online privacy, I figure that since there are over 156 million blogs out there, what are the chances that some wacko is going to find my blog to pick on. And if that does happen, then I will just change my name from Lynda to Linda.

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    1. I like my name, too. And I like your name. You are very right about the y making it more lyrical. The name Grace was in our top 5 if my son were a girl.

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  9. I remember the first time I really wonder if "just" and "does" were words. I'd been lying in bed feeling them in my mouth and had pretty much decided that I'd somehow made them up. Enjoyed reading about your names. They are such a part of who we are and who we become. I like that I've had my fair share of different ones.

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    1. I love "pretty much decided that I'd somehow made them up"! That is exactly how it feels!

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  10. I love the last paragraph, but also hearing your stories:) You tell them so well. I think you have just inspired a post on names for my blog as well *adds to list of topics* p.s. I'm with JT- please let me know about the word verification. I tried!

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    1. Look under the gear thing on your dashboard and there should be a choice for use the old interface, then you can turn off the word verification under settings -> comments. I think that's how I did it, anyway.

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  11. I've used variations of my name at different times for the very reasons you've stated above. I protect my family but, for me, I finally had to loosened the reigns. Now that I'm writing a book, I'm getting concerned again. The fear is almost enough to stop me dead in my tracks. Since I can't write and worry at the same time, I've decided to write today and deal with all the spooky 'what ifs' tomorrow. Good post.

    OH and when you have a moment, please pickup your award...http://www.muchneededadvice.com/2012/03/10/i-have-a-what-an-award/ :)

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    1. I'm not sure how much "protection" using silly nicknames really provides, but it's like Michelle said above, I don't like the idea of putting names with faces. I don't like to worry about things, especially giant, vague, unknown things, but I also know that I tend to be a bit naive about things from time to time. You're right, though. Can't write and worry at the same time.
      Thanks for the award!

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  12. What a fascinating post! Love the way without using anyone's name, you present them very clearly... Love the whole "Lou" thing, it makes me a teeny bit jealous. (I'm single) I guess a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!

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    1. Thank you for stopping by! The Lou thing happened quite by accident, but it is stuck hard and fast now!

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  13. I have many of the same thoughts. I don't have children, however, so that's a few less worries to have about real names and such. I don't care if you know my name. Even though I don't *actually* know you and you and your husband call each other Lou, which is a little wonky and might be indicative of some weirdness and maybe when I visit Seattle I will call you up anyway because weirdness and I? We's friends.

    What? Rambly? A bit. Catching up on posts and this is an excellent place to start.

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  14. My kids never called me mommy. Now, the teenagers do,which is funny to me. Their friends call me mommy, which I find endearing.
    I had nicknames for my kids on my blog, but I stopped using them for two reasons. One, there are so many and I kept forgetting what I called everyone. Two, I decided last spring that since the only people who read my blog were people I was related to or knew well, what's the use? Of course, now I have more readers. C'est la vie.

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    1. I don't know if I could keep 7 kids' actual names straight, much less pseudonyms!

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  15. Beautiful. I've only recently discovered the beautiful fact of no matter how much we change and what we go through in life, there will always be a little piece, that nobody can change. It's delightfully individual.

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    1. Amen to that! It is kind of strange to say that in the context of being a loving wife and mom - some would say that you give everything up to that - but there is a me that even my most beloved can't touch.

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  16. Love this. In yoga class the other day my teacher was talking about precisely this thing ... despite all of our identities, there is an essence that connects those various manifestations of the self. We find it where breath begins. If I listen quietly, sometimes I can find it. :)

    Thanks for stopping by my blog!

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    1. I love that. Listening quietly is difficult, but so richly rewarding. Thanks for stopping back! I just loved your post!

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  17. The last line really got to me.

    "Jane" is so dialed into my identity, sometimes I wonder if I have created Jane or if Jane created me.

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    1. This is interesting to me. When we chose names for our kids, we wanted them to have names that they could create any person they were out of them. Now that they're here and have these vibrant personalities, I wonder sometimes how much their names - and the freedom allowed by them - had to do with that.

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  18. Oh yes. Also? I am afraid of awkward, blushing silences so, in the event we meet face to face, I'll be calling you something other than Lou. *laughing*

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    1. That will be fine. Face to face is an entirely different world, no?

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