![]() Van Sickle, the current version of Van Sycklin - the name my Dutch ancestors brought to America in 1652 - was far too easy a target for the slew of Popsicle, icicle, and pickle jokes that followed me from the elementary school jungle gym to the sleek, locker-lined halls of middle school. If the nicknames Hannah-banana and Hanna-Barbera rolled off my adolescent back (in the ’80s, my peers and I kept company with Scooby-Doo, Fred and Wilma Flintstone, and the Smurfs on Saturday mornings), my surname made me want to slink from sight. Growing up, my name led to relentless teasing on the playground. My daughter’s chief concern, that the question could be awkward, evaporated when I flipped the script and showed her how easily a simple answer could spark meaningful conversation - the kind in which I wish someone had engaged me several decades ago. I paused for a moment, before nailing my response: “How about something simple, like, ‘My mom has her birth name, and I have my dad’s name,” I suggested before audibly exhaling at the ease of my answer. “I mean, I don’t always want to tell everyone about Cora or you and Dad,” she added, understandably. We were sitting around the dining room table, debriefing after a day at school, when the question came. The conversation in my house started with a really simple question: “What do I tell my friends when they want to know why we don’t have the same last name?” my then 14-year-old asked out of the blue. ![]() Turns out, my daughters associated the name change with their little sister’s death and parents’ subsequent divorce, and they were embarrassed - which is why I’ve placed lots of scaffolding around this super-important choice, not obligation, that myriad women face each day. So I slowly transitioned from my married surname, to a hyphenated surname, to my birth name - in a scant 24 months - which, I later learned, did not sit so well with some. ![]() As an English teacher I could have embraced Shakespeare’s stance: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.” But I wasn’t going for the 400-year-old attitude suggesting names are simply labels and do not hold worth or meaning. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |