Marriage, Continued
Thank you for the well wishes. We did indeed go out for dinner, and after a false start at the wrong restaurant, had a very nice time. The Hubs gave me two, count'em, two pairs of earrings which are both very, very nice. I'll try to get a picture tomorrow.
We also made tentative plans to go away for a long weekend, not during the summer, but in November, when I get a couple of days off for teachers' convention. (Thursday and Friday of the week with Election Day in it.) We're thinking of going to Virginia to see Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's home) and drive along Skyline Drive (I think it's called), one of the most beautiful drives in America, I hear. And possibly go to Harper's Ferry in West Virginia, which is a Civil War thing. (Where John Brown staged his abolitionist raid which helped spark the war.) And maybe a day in DC on the way back; we'll see.
Anyway, the Empress commented about being married for more than half of one's life and yes, certainly, we are that. I was 24 and the Hubs just shy of 23 when we got married 31 years ago. We got married about a week after his parents' 25th anniversary, so we're past that, too.
The funny thing, and perhaps many of you will identify with this, is the idea that women generally change their names when they marry; I have been a Chai for 31 years, but I was only a Pre-Chai for 24. Who does that make me? Do I still retain my identity as a Pre-Chai?
I absolutely do. It is part of the bond with my parents and my sister. To a lesser degree, even my children share that bond because we identify the five of us women (me and my two, my sister and her one) as Pre-Chai Women. Hey, depending on the circumstance and the character trait being displayed, we will even identify as Pre-Pre-Chai Women, which is to say that we are acting like my mother's side of the family, and identify as her maiden name.
What's in a name? When I got married, the Hubs said it was fine with him if I kept my maiden name, but really, I love my father, but it was a terrible name. Even he said he should have changed it when he got out of the Army. His father wouldn't have minded, but that ship -- all of those ships -- have long ago sailed. As far as I'm concerned, although I will be a Pre-Chai till I die, I'm perfectly content with my simple Italian Chai name.
My Wonderful Nice has made an interesting choice to keep her maiden name. Interesting for several reasons. Hers is a generic German Jewish name, not hard to spell or pronounce, but her husband's is a lovely, simple English/Scandinavian type name, aka, the kind of name I have always longed for. Another part of the mystery is that she cannot be keeping this name to honor her father, because he is and always has been a shit, especially to her. It isn't her mother's last name anymore, because my sister has really traded up in terms of names with each marriage and now has one of the simplest generic names there is (which I love.) So we can only speculate that Niece has kept this name because a) it's part of her identity, and b) it's the same name that her brothers have, one of whom is her twin.
Because I think she doesn't get it, as I do, that she will always be who she is, and even keep that name as part of her identity when it isn't hers anymore, and that it's not the name that bonds her to her brothers, although they will always collectively be Them, just as they are all still Pre-Chais (etc.)
Am I making any sense?
I really do think that everyone should keep, change, or for that matter, make up any name they want to have. Just something to think about.
WATCHING GEORGE LOPEZ :: ENTRY #1806
SUMMER BOOK #3: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
I kept my maiden name when we got married. It was me, lots of people knew me by that name, and I really didn't want to change it. I would just have had to change it back, anyway....
ReplyDeleteIf you do come to DC, please let me know. I would love to meet you. I just realized, after reading your post, that I have now been married for *exactly* half my life! Whoa. And, I did keep my name, because with it my name is a complete, though ungrammatical, sentence. I couldn't give that up!
ReplyDeleteI dropped my maiden name entirely when I got married. It's not even my middle name, as lots of people tend to do. I really didn't like my last name; I'd been teased for being Jewish for my entire childhood, even though we're not. So it's like I was being branded for something I'm not. Plus my husband has a common and easily spelled name, and with a first name like "Karyl," I needed all the help I could get!
ReplyDeleteWe also never discuss that this or that is a So-and-So family trait, or that I'm acting just like a So-and-So when I do a certain thing. So I don't really have an identity related to my maiden name. I'm just KARYL, if that makes any sense. And what's funny is if I do identify as a Such-and-So, it's usually my mom's maiden name, though we share absolutely no DNA at all.
My mom didn't take my dad's name when she married him, but she was 33 with a career already started in the Navy. She felt it would be too hard to switch everything over. I think that's a bit of a cop-out, since Navy women do it every single day. It made it rather difficult on me growing up because it made it obvious that the woman signing my permission slips was "just" my legal guardian and not my mother. I would much preferred to share a name with her.
It's funny -- like Wonderful Niece, I kept my maiden name when I married, even though my father (who gave me that name) was a total shit. My sister married and did not keep that name, my mother remarried and changed her name -- but I still kept mine. I did it because that's who I've always been. It's MY NAME. My husband (like Wonderful Niece's husband) has a very nice, rather catchy name, but I never considered changing my name to his for even a moment.
ReplyDeleteIs it too late for me to chime in with my name comment?
ReplyDeleteI kept my birth name when I got married, despite the fact that it's not a particularly fun name to have (hint: name of major religion that's not Christianity or Judaism) in this society. My husband and I did have the active discussion of all the various combinations of possibilities -- I change, he changes, we both change, neither change -- and we both decided that neither of us wanted to change our own name, and neither of us cared what the other did.
Children will be more complicated, of course. A. is actually leaning towards naming the girls with my name, and the boys with his. I am a pretty modern lady, but that may be too modern even for me. We shall see.
I kept my maiden name, mostly because the Mom's maiden name began with V and she'd married out of it, thus moving me up in the alphabetic chain. Had I taken That Man of Mine's last name (also begins with V), I'd have undone all her hard work.
ReplyDelete