What's Your Name? Come Here Often?

As I was driving the kids to school this morning, a typical sarcastic spout took a negative turn in our car, and I found myself....I won’t say outwitted, because I refuse to ever be, but I was just a bit ....*blah*....with the whole schtick, so I stopped talking to the offspring I created, both physically and whatever it is that controls the sarcastic gene.  This gave me time to just think and have wandering thoughts and be silent for ten minutes. 

Nice!  I honestly might take this up as my next hobby.  I hope it lasts longer than my stint in scrap-booking or hot yoga did.

As the last child dragged her wet sneakers out of the backseat, each foot seeminly weighing in at a hefty 600 pounds, slinging her heavy backpack to the hump day drudgery that awaited her, I waved her off and stomped on the gas pedal.  Have a good day honey, now get out.  Frankly, I had found myself enjoying the quiet and I wanted more of it.

The mental wandering got me thinking about nothing.  20 minutes prior to, I muttered to myself, but loud enough for the kids to hear my intoned guilt, exhaustedly, “Fine, I’ll just be the chauffeur today”, cuing my children that they were on a very thin line of making me feel pretty undesirable right about now.  Somehow that led me to the motherly ultimate question, “who am I?” 

Okay, not that I’m always this prolific at 8 AM, but for whatever reason, the topic of names came to me.  Who am I, as in what name I go by, came to me.  NameS to be more specific.

Before I actually materialized in this world, inutero, I’m sure I was named “Surprise” for awhile.  That gave way, eventually to “The Baby” and somewhere along the line, my parent’s faith would have them believe “Blessing” was in order.

In my family, my parent’s had the rule, mom would name the girls, dad would name the boys.  Yay for sexist ruling of the 70‘s.  Upon my arrival, “Eugene” had to be retired (thank God!) and I was “Girl” for a minute.  I would have been “Danielle”, but my mother had a friend who took that name from my family and named her child that 12 days before at her own daughter’s birth.  This put my mother into a tailspin of unsuredness.  My father settled on “Theresa”, after the nun who would be named my Godmother, ironically.  Mom said I didn’t look like a Theresao, so she had to come up with something better.  Fast (Dad had no patience).

My mom, given to whims of verbal play and since my birthday was in late spring, almost went for the folly of “April May” (oh, the therapy we nearly avoided!) but settled instead on “Cherie Lynne”. 

What most people, even some friends, don’t know, is that my mother actually named me “Cherie”, pronounced “Sha-Ree”;  the French, pretty version of “Cherie”.  No one in my entire life ever called me by this, except for one friend of my grandmother’s.  When I see her, to this day, she still calls me “Sha-Ree”.  I tend not to punch little old ladies, so I let her get away with this trick that would have me throat throttling anyone else who tried.  I don’t feel like a “Sha-Ree”, I’m not Frenchy feeling and sexy like a “Sha-Ree” would be.  I don’t smoke long handled cigarettes or set me paint easel in the cobblestone streets.  I do eat croissants however, so maybe there’s something to it.

If my mom named me “Sha-Ree” I don’t know why she never called me that.  I don’t know when she decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and just Americanized me in one fell swoop.  Knowing my mom, she was too tired to put in the French effort out of fear she’d be enslaved to talking in an accent for the rest of her life.  I was probably destined for Cherie before the belly button stump fell off.

In the moment I became “Cherie”, I subsequently also became “5th Child of Jack & Helen”, “The Baby of the Family”, “Little Sister”, “Daughter”, “Granddaughter”, and “Youngest Cousin in this Generation”.  These are names that have never left me, to this day.

Growing up, I had no nicknames to my knowledge.  I know a brother referred to me as “Embarrassment” but that was more due to his teenage self coming to terms with the fact I was a by-product of our parent’s having sex.  Thankfully I never went by the name “Bed Wetter” or “Booger Eater”.  In today’s Toddlers and Tiaras world, I can assure you I never went by “Princess” or the like, not even for Halloween.  I was probably more of a tomboy; I do not remember a summer that didn’t have me picking off scabs on my knees.  I spent my childhood not caring about a single thing as long as I could ride my Hot Wheels plastic trike to the point of wearing out the big black tires.  One year I purposely tied one end of a rope to my trike and the other end to my Barbie Tour Bus, fully loaded with the voluptuous blonde there’s-no-way-I-can-ever-live-up-to-this role models and took the sharp turn at the end of the block over and over again until I got the right speed down in order to catapult each and every Barbie out of it and break the bus in the process.  *Damian’s work here is done.  This house is clean.*

Upon getting to junior high, my dark looks and black hair led a loud boy to dub me “Squaw” for a few years.  Given my real Native American lineage, I guess he would’ve been more amused if that had bothered me.  It didn’t.  To the point I didn’t even notice either when eventually that name dropped from existence.

In high school, my then boyfriend’s big rusted out blue pick up truck led socially awkward horny stupid bro-friends of his to call me “Heavy Chevy” for a time being.  I never understood this; at first I thought it was them insinuating I was husky and overweight.  My boyfriend assured me it was in reference to us getting “heavy” in the “Chevy.”  I still didn’t understand it, and figured all boys were just stupid.  Side-note: The lad who started this obnoxious nickname, flunked out of high school.  I guess “Correct” could be added to my monikers (see aforementioned stupid reference).

Throughout high school, I was of course temporarily at times called “Girlfriend” and then “Ex Girlfriend”.  I was a few times called “Funny”, or “Cute”.  I was dubbed “Shy” by some, “Loud” by the next.  Many years later, I laughed at the man who first seriously called me “Hot”.  I still shake my head when my husband calls me “Sexy.”  It makes as little sense to me as all the others.

I became “Graduate” in the early 90’s. For awhile I was “Socially College Student” but after a few years I named myself “Drop Out” (See “Working Stiff”) and moved back home to become “Fiance” and then eventually “Wife”.  I had previously turned my head to the names of “Horseback Trail Lead”, “Bank Teller”, and several times over as “Assistant Manager”, always “Responsible” and “Level Headed”.

“Bride” lead into “Newlywed” which lasted only a little while, and as time passed, “Wife” (Look up “Grocery Shopper”, “Coupon Clipper”, “Cleaner” and “Endless Toilt Paper Re-Stocker”) turned into “Mother” (see also, “Mom”, “Mommy”, “Ma”, “Mama”, “Chauffeur”, “Maid”, “Chef” and “Laundry Aide”.)  I’ve been “Cher” a few times over to some friends, most of whom only said it when it was too difficult to drunkenly add on the ‘ie’.  

I was “Awesome Bartender” (“The One With the Fuck Me Eyes”) when it was as easy time in my life to be a bartender and a few people threw “Best Shot Maker in Town” out there.  I’m pretty sure that was a compliment, but they were drunk by then, so who knows.  During this time I heard a lot of different names, most in good fun.  I’d like to think the man who punched his wife in the face that night right in front of my eyes tells his grandkids I’m “That Bitch Who Thought She Was Something Special When She Slammed Me Into The Dart Machine”  (See also “Winner”).  When I got offered $50 to flash a guy in the bar, I hope he refers to me somewhere today as “That Ballsy Lady Who Told Me They Were Surely Worth $100....Each”.  (I’ve never gone by “Girl Gone Wild”, what can I say?)

I’ve been called a “Good Mom” and a “Bad Mom”.  “Too Fat” and “Too Skinny”.  “Smart” and “Stupid”.  I’ve toggled between “Rights Activist” and “Fag Hag”.  It has been requested of me from time to time that I take on a roll of “Nympho” but am always required to be more “Motherly” when someone around me has a runny nose (and not necessarily just the kids).  I am the official “Tour Guide”, “Planner” and “Packer” (“Bears Fan” for those of you who follow football, tyvm) when it comes to any family vacation.  I’ve been “Juror # 8” and once was a “Defendant” in a court case.  

I have spent time being “Home & School President”, “School Board Member”, “Artist”, “Baker” or “Blood & Plasma Donator”.  By the time I was “Divorcee”, I simultaneously was “Secretary” at work and “Single Mom” (AKA “Juggler”) at home.  Often referred to as “Strong” and “Independent”, not I found myself hearing “Bitch”, “Prude” and “Whore” tossed my way more often than I cared for.  “Cheater” was a favorite of my accuser for awhile.  In reference to this, my current husband calls me “Jezzie”, short for “Jezebel”.

Somewhere along the line, this new man who had entered my life spent evenings inviting me into his arms calling me “Interesting”.  

He called me “Funny” again. 

“A Lifesaver”.

“Beautiful”.

He still calls me “Beautiful”.  Everyday.

There are a lot of names that I’ve been called.  A lot of names I’ve been blessed with, or accused with, depending on how you look at it.  There are probably some I haven’t even heard to my face.  There are more that encompass who I am, not mentioned here.

I realized something: It doesn’t matter what I am called. 
What matters is what I answer to.
P.S. And yes, I do answer when he says, “Hey Jezzie, pass the bread.

------------------------------

“What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?'
'Cats don't have names,' it said.
'No?' said Coraline.
'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. 

We know who we are, so we don't need names.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

All Gave Some

Today is September 11, 2013.  9/11/13.  9/11.....a day that comes to the minds of millions around the world as a day of destruction, hate, and death.  In 2001, the Best Country in the World felt incredible pain as a whole, the only time I, in my 30+ years, have seen.  

People hugged tighter in the grocery stores.  Coffee clutchers had all they could do to pour over newspapers.  Everyone shook their head.  No one seemed to know how to feel about it, much less how to process it.  We all knew it would engage a full on war.  It really had to; there wasn’t much of a choice for anything else.

A few years after 9/11, my husband told me he was thinking about joining the service.  It was a simple statement in our tiny dining room, where he had been Googling enlistment procedures. 

In the dozen years we had been together up until this point, it was the first time I ever heard him talk about the military.  Within 48 hours, a recruiter knocked on my front door, and I watched my husband, the father of my 2 children, sign on the dotted line.  I heard this desire to enlist in the service happened often after times such as 9/11; the wrong doings of some people in this world simply urged others to do something about it.

As my husband signed his life away, our life away, my oldest daughter, a toddler then, told me she didn’t like the recruiter because “he had Dr. Phil shoes on.”.  He scared her and she had no idea why.  I held our youngest on my hip as we kind of just hung out/ hid in the background, listening to the conversation.  As a family, we were never asked if it would be okay, I was never asked if I thought I could or wanted to handle the duties of single parenting while my husband went off to do whatever he had to do.  The kids or I weren’t consulted at all if we thought it was a good idea, or if we agreed to it.
He signed as the recruiter came to find me and said, “Don’t worry, he’ll never see sand.  At least not for 2 years.”

I had a range of emotions those days.  I was scared and unsure.  We were by then already in war with Iraq and I didn’t know a single thing about the military or being a military wife.  It was a foreign entity to me, completely.  I didn’t grow up in the military, I had no desire to be in the military myself, and I thought my husband didn’t either.  

To be honest, I was a little pissed off.  Our lives were happily, I thought, on the path we were steering down together.  And I thought he liked the drive.  But now he just jacked the wheel from my hands and completely and totally derailed our trip, our plans, our life, with absolutely no regard to us, as a family.

I was proud.  Or I wanted to be.  Immediately after his enlistment, I remember wanting to be proud but not knowing how to be proud.  It was all just so new to me.  It felt like I myself was dropped off in a foreign land with my babies and had to learn how to speak the language, how to survive.  My family unit depended on it.

If I can be self appreciatve for a minute, I’d explain to you that I know full well the beauty of me is I can pull myself up by my bootstraps, mentally and emotionally, better than most.  So a few days into my husband’s enlistment, I knew this was indeed happening, and I better dive in and get used to it and make the best out of it.  And with that, I found myself surprisingly proud to be thrust into a military life, like it or not.

Those first days away my husband had, the whole reserve training “one weekend a month, 2 weeks a year” are now comical to me in hindsight.  His first weekend away, my God, I cried like a baby.  2 days.  2 frickin days!!  I could barely handle it.  He trained less than 150 miles away from our home.  The kids and I holed up in the house and I just could feel myself shrivel up inside myself, as if I was a cartoonish starving figure; cheeks and soul shrinking to a skeletal resemblence.  When he returned home that first Sunday evening, the kids ran to him out on the sidewalk, I ran to him; he was home!  I didn’t think I could handle it, but I bit my lip and raised my chin and dealt.  It was what I did now.

Time passed.  Training weekends passed.  His ‘2 weeks’ came and went.  Twice.

2 years had gone by, actually not quite; one year and 11 months passed, and he got a phone call to prepare and pack his bags.  He’d be deployed to Iraq within the month, leaving right after New Year’s.

Now, I had feelings I knew how to name.  I was pissed at that fucking recruiter.  He promised me 2 years of untouchableness.  He lied.  Not to say I wasn’t surprised.  I wasn’t at all.  I knew my husband would be deployed.  I wanted to be proved wrong though.
When I saw Mr. Recruiter Man at the ‘Family Farewell”  day at base, I had all I could do not to lash out.  As luck would have it, I didn’t have to.  He walked in the door and families surrounded him like it was a midnight lynching.  I obviously wasn’t the only one he made a ‘promise’ to.  I focused on sitting next to my husband.

I was terrified and still SO unsure.  I questioned the tangeable things that pertained to our daily lives.  How would I hear from him, if at all?  What if I need to reach him?  How long would he be gone?  How would the bills get paid?  Upon enlistment, I questioned, “how am I going to do this?”.  Now, upon deployment, I didn’t dare question anything of the like.  I didn’t have the energy or the mental strength to do so because if the answers were anything other than a story book answer, I didn’t think I’d survive that realization.

He deployed and off he went.  To encapsulate our feelings, how our daughters cried thousands of misunderstanding tears over the nights, to explain our days....it’s impossible.  I trudged on, day by day, finding recognizeable normalcy in routines, and because I did, my children did as well.  It didn’t take long before his family turned on us.  They never wrote to him.  They judged me.  They stuck noses in where they did not belong, and they offered help only with shady strings attached.  I had a moment of utter exhaustion with them, crying to the point of vomiting over the entire ‘why meeeee?’ feeling.  My kids saw that.  They heard his sister call me bad names and they couldn’t know why.  And then?  After that day?  I stopped.

I stopped talking to them, stopped wishing I had them to depend on, and started depending on my family only.  When he finally called and had time to talk, the flood gates opened and I was able to share my difficulties and concerns finally with the man I married.  “Don’t worry ‘bout it.” 

That was it.  No overly concerned reaction, not one I would’ve like anyway.  No questions.  So, I chalked it up to not me overreacting, but him having bigger things to concentrate on.  He was the one who was deployed afterall.  I had no way of knowing his inner most fears and daily life.  I asked, but he stopped sharing.  So I started to slowly depend on no one, but me.  Oh hello, there you are, bootstraps.  I left anyone who wasn’t in my life as a support in the dust and forged on.  Talk about military life.  I had it all along.  I just wasn’t enlisted in it.

Nearly a year had gone by before he came home.  In that time, my mother, who I had a perfect relationship with, died in front of my eyes.  I developed a small addiction to Ambian.  I gained 40 lbs and kicked the pills to the curb.  Not only did I write several letters a week to him, ever week, I also learned the names of those in his unit and wrote to them.  I celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary alone.  I celebrated my birthday alone.  I threw myself into volunteering and made sure I was there when the kids needed a hug or a laugh.  I didn’t need, nor want anyone else responsible for any of it; it would be me who made sure they had it.  I threw birthday parties and summer parties and paid bills and watched the kids grow almost a foot each.

The high of a soldier returning home is uncomparable to another feeling that I know of.  Leading up to the final day of welcoming home, my life was abuzz.  Cleaning the house more than usual, planning for family downtime, prepping the kids....and fielding calls.  I hated the calls more than anything.  Friends and family calling to express how excited they were for us, I loved.  The calls from his family, some 10 months later, NOW offering to be there for us, I had absolutely no time for.  I refused any help they offered by this point, and trust me, it wasn’t often they offered anyway.  

The worst calls I took were ones from well meaning (?) Ombudsmen within his unit, the specific man or one of his office helpers who were there ‘to help me’.  This was the first time I had heard from them.  Ever.  They never reached out.  They never called before.  They never gave any kind of information they promised.  They did call days before he returned home to tell me, and I swear on this, not to upset him so he wouldn’t kill me.

“Don’t do anything, like, mow the lawn....let him be the man.  You’ve handled everything this past year, now don’t.  And hopefully he won’t, like, jump out and stab you in a flashback.”

Swear.  To.  God.

After the 4th or 5th call like this over the course of a few days, I stopped answering the phone.  I told them to stop calling me.  I was gaining fondness for my bootstraps by this time I guess you could say.

Things seemed normal when he came home.  He had seen death and carnage.  He had lost friends.  He was on some disabilty.  Slowly, a new personality did start to emerge.  He began to relish his time away from his family and really enjoyed his time with the military.  For me tho, that was still something to be proud of.  I thought things had transitioned well.

You can rationalize anything, when you want to.

Word came about a second deployment.  I had no doubt we could handle this one.  We’d be fine.  Nothing new.  I felt I was now, fully, a military wife, and I was perfectly okay with that.  Again, leaving around the next holiday season, the kids a little bit older, we sent him off amid the same prayers and hoped everything would return to normal when he came home. 

There was a significant change in our personalities; personally mine was one of renewed faith in myself, a “I can do it all” attitude, and I don’t think either one of us anticipated the full effect that tide would create within our relationship.  It was going to be simply not a year of riding the waves with this deployment, I knew I could steer the ship.  The more I swung out of being that woman who cried over the first weekend of training, to the woman who much more easily forged on, the more he tugged back trying to regain control.  I think he missed the woman crying, the woman huddled inside, the woman waiting for him to come back.  He was being taught day in and day out how to succumb to the military lifestyle, I was flat out told we did not come first anymore.  I was proud, yes, but my problem was, when I started to not be okay with that part of it.  If I was expected to compartmentalize for the sake of our lives, why wasn't he?

Mid deployment, this time to several countries as a humanatarian mission, the shift within our marriage became  a thing of continental drift porportion.  I didn’t need nor taking sleeping pills, because I slept well.  I taught the kids about their own tiny glittery boot straps.  He was in considerable less danger on this deployment.  I had to weather the storm of missing my husband, as a school or some bungalows were built up in Haiti with the corner stones of my marriage.  I still had ups and downs.  But they were lesser.  Or I made the mistake of believing they were of lesser importance.

People who know me, people who followed our demise with tubs of extra buttered popcorn like it was the billion dollar blockbuster of the week, know our story.  They know my side.  They know my opinion of what went down (and I say opinion only because if you were to ask him, he’d surely tell you something different.  At least, he used to.)  The cheating that came, the abuse, the secret nature that our relationship turned into....it’s not even blog worthy, more like novel worthy.  I could literally fill a book.  

Funny how you rationalize.  Maybe it’s a woman thing.  Maybe it’s a mother thing, or a wife thing.  I think it’s a human thing.  I rationalized everything for awhile.  He had been through so much after all.  We both had.  Divorce never crossed my mind.  Until, one day, it did.

I felt our marriage was beyond fixing, something truly against my Catholic upbrining and beliefs, against my faith!, deal breakers came in the form of many lies and much mud slung.  I could rationalize the intense feelings of mistrust that cropped up.  I could, for a while at least, rationalize the lashing out at the ones we’re closest to in form of name calling and accusations, no matter how off the wall they seemed to be at the moment.  I rationalized living in a parallel universe, but I was certain it would come to pass.

It became difficult to accept reason for no apologies however.  How does one say something terrible, knowing it’s terrible, to someone they love, and then NOT apologize?!  Even, eventually?  Not just no apologies for harm and pain intentionally caused, but the entire attitude of, ‘this is how we are going to be from now on....deal, because I’m a soldier.’

Um.  Hell no.  I all of a sudden had bootstraps pulling me almost against my will, along a path I never imagined.  By the time I found out computers were hacked and people planted in my life to ‘watch’ me, to report on me, or when I found the military-esque files filled out in detail with copies of letters I’d written, phone calls I’d had, places I went tracked, and discovered my cell phone was bugged to duplicate everything it did, well, what can I say? 

I felt I knew exactly who the enemy was.

For a while after my divorce I felt, at best, jaded.  It makes me nervous to admit that.  Since 9/11, the heroic, and well deserved spin that has been placed upon the shoulders of soldiers across the country has become the most acceptable lemming reaction.  Having the slightest doubt in my heart about that, scares me to admit.  Can you imagine the backlash?  No one admits they’d want to roll their eyes when they heard the National Anthem.  I didn’t feel quilty when I took the flag down from the side of my house, as I was moving out.  I went from being a known military supporter in my community, writing letters, sending care packages and participating in local parades, to being a woman who felt so scorned by what the military did to my husband, my life, my children, to me.  I just stayed quiet, off to the sidelines because I didn’t have a whole lot of anything nice to say anymore. 

If I had been proud of his service, I now found myself questioning why, as a spouse, my service to this country wasn’t recognized as a casuality itself.  This threw me into unfamiliar territory.  I’m not one with a “me,me,me” attiitude.  My mentality drifted into historical figures of women-folk waiting on the homefront, not valued, not recognized, and God dang!  That irked the shit out of me.  A family member here or there not appreciating me was one thing, and I wasn’t out brow beating people looking for appreciation.  But I’d be damned if I was going to be made to feel scorned as an a unsupportive wife of my military man.

This took me a few good years to come to terms with.  There wasn’t really a lightbulb moment that I can recall where it all clicked back to the warm and fuzzy feelings.  9/11 has been a hard day for me, for different reasons than most, I’d say.  Far, far away from tall buildings, or hijacked planes, I still felt because of it, I’d lost my husband.  I stopped attending local memorial services, but rather watched the national ones from my television, if at all.  I’d see the duplicated Facebook pictures and videos over and over posted from friends.  I’d hear my priest pray for the safety and protection of soldiers.  And I guess, secretly through it all, I’d grieve even longer over loss, so many degrees of loss.

This year was the first year in awhile I’ve been comfortable enough to feel the depth of gratitude in my heart for what service members provide for me.  The pendulum swings, and I’ve learned to rationalize, again.  I thought I was rationalizing that the actions of one couple in history, even when it’s me, has nothing to do with the big picture. 

And then I realized, it’s just the opposite.  That makes my gratitude run deeper yet.

I again, am able to sing along with the Anthem, mentally salute and thank a vet, and more importantly, mean it.