Finding a Voice
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
to be known by one's own name
Last week naming was a theme for me. On Wednesday someone was looking at the diplomas in my office and commented, "I didn't know your middle name is Faye." "Yes," I said, "Faye with an E," to which he responded, "Like Anne of Green Gables." How delightful that he made that connection!
On Friday I spent most of the day with my friend Judith who used to go by Judy but has reclaimed her full given name. She told me a story of a woman named Connie who had a lot of back trouble. While praying for Connie's back, Judith got a strong impression that the back trouble was related to Connie's name, so she asked, "What's your real name?" Connie explained that her real name was Colleen, but as a child she had an Aunt Colleen who stayed with the family and two Colleens was too confusing, so her mom changed her name to Connie. After that prayer session with Judith, Connie went back to her original name, Colleen, and was freed from the back problems. Additionally, the organization she works with, Women's Aglow International, later expanded its mission from women only to include men and changed its name simply to Aglow International!
I told this story to Michelle who had just finished taking a course on Theology of God and Creation in which they discussed the importance of naming.
My name is Colleen Faye which literally means "girl" and "fairy or elf." Carol commented that it fits me: feminine, creative, whimsical, romantic.
Kevin and Melanie will welcome their 4th child any day now. Each of their first 3 girls has lived into the meaning of her name, almost uncannilly sometimes.
Then today I was doing some research on oral history and found this jewel of an excerpt:
Gram loved to tell the story of old Mrs. Burden, who lived on the same James Island where black people in a thousand ways were inculcated with the unjust etiquette I described. No doubt in many of those ways Mrs. Burden was inculcated, too. But as a military widow, she was collecting a pension, which meant that she had to collect her check from the downtown white powers-that-be. When Gram began to teach her pupils’ parents and grandparents, Mrs. Burden made it her business, old as she was, to learn to sign her name. People asked her why she bothered and asked Gram why she bothered with a pupil so old. But Mrs. Burden kept on coming and brought the teacher, Gram said, "more eggs than the law allows." She was determined to be able to walk into that office of downtown white folks one day and sign for her pension properly. Mrs. Burden was after a schoolbook lesson; she was after a non-schoolbook lesson. She was determined to stop having to put herself down as "X." Gram said, "The day Mrs. Burden could go into that office and write ‘Mrs. Samuel Burden,’ she almost didn't need her walking stick." In fights as small-scale and personal as this one—the fight to be known by one’s own name—the guerrilla war went on in the worst of times, blasting away bit by bit the invisible mountains of the Jim Crow South.
From "What one cannont remember mistakenly," by Karen E. Fields in Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience.
On Friday I spent most of the day with my friend Judith who used to go by Judy but has reclaimed her full given name. She told me a story of a woman named Connie who had a lot of back trouble. While praying for Connie's back, Judith got a strong impression that the back trouble was related to Connie's name, so she asked, "What's your real name?" Connie explained that her real name was Colleen, but as a child she had an Aunt Colleen who stayed with the family and two Colleens was too confusing, so her mom changed her name to Connie. After that prayer session with Judith, Connie went back to her original name, Colleen, and was freed from the back problems. Additionally, the organization she works with, Women's Aglow International, later expanded its mission from women only to include men and changed its name simply to Aglow International!
I told this story to Michelle who had just finished taking a course on Theology of God and Creation in which they discussed the importance of naming.
My name is Colleen Faye which literally means "girl" and "fairy or elf." Carol commented that it fits me: feminine, creative, whimsical, romantic.
Kevin and Melanie will welcome their 4th child any day now. Each of their first 3 girls has lived into the meaning of her name, almost uncannilly sometimes.
Then today I was doing some research on oral history and found this jewel of an excerpt:
Gram loved to tell the story of old Mrs. Burden, who lived on the same James Island where black people in a thousand ways were inculcated with the unjust etiquette I described. No doubt in many of those ways Mrs. Burden was inculcated, too. But as a military widow, she was collecting a pension, which meant that she had to collect her check from the downtown white powers-that-be. When Gram began to teach her pupils’ parents and grandparents, Mrs. Burden made it her business, old as she was, to learn to sign her name. People asked her why she bothered and asked Gram why she bothered with a pupil so old. But Mrs. Burden kept on coming and brought the teacher, Gram said, "more eggs than the law allows." She was determined to be able to walk into that office of downtown white folks one day and sign for her pension properly. Mrs. Burden was after a schoolbook lesson; she was after a non-schoolbook lesson. She was determined to stop having to put herself down as "X." Gram said, "The day Mrs. Burden could go into that office and write ‘Mrs. Samuel Burden,’ she almost didn't need her walking stick." In fights as small-scale and personal as this one—the fight to be known by one’s own name—the guerrilla war went on in the worst of times, blasting away bit by bit the invisible mountains of the Jim Crow South.
From "What one cannont remember mistakenly," by Karen E. Fields in Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience.
posted by Colleen McCubbin at 11:14 PM
1 Comments:
I have always loved your Faye with an E! In fact, when I tell people that your middle name is Faye (funny how I even find the occasion to tell them this), I always say, "with an E".
Anyway, it's funny you should be thinking of names, etc, at around the same time (mid May) that my grama had quite shocking news re: her sister who died in infancy. All her life, my grama had believed her to be named Catherine, after one of her mother's sisters. This is what her mother told her. Grama's cousin recently went to inland Australia to visit the common family graves, and my grama asked in advance if she could drop by her sister's grave. After finding it not there, Grama's cousin did some digging, and discovered that the baby was actually named Eva Kathleen, after one of her mom's OTHER sisters! Every year, on her sister's birthday, my grama has been saying a prayer and talking to her sister. At 82 she realized she was using the wrong name! Apparently it was a disagreement with her mom and dad over the naming, and dad won out becaus mom was too tired and emotionally spent at having a child die almost immediately after birth. I think....
Anyway, names.....Jasmine is really Chanel, but I can't imagine her as a Chanel now. I'm sure I've told you that story.....
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