Michael Ferrari at the AAA satellite office in Stamford,
Connecticut, was the person who finally gave me the road map to a successful
reversion to my maiden name. My married
name was Boccardi – still is hyphenated in some cases to ease the association
(me being the mother of my three children) to included my maiden and married
names. My maiden name is
Merrifield. Unless your name is Smith or
Jones, I can bet that anyone has had to correct the spelling of their name to
someone butchering it. Kathryn Jeanne
Merrifield is a spelling nightmare, so I didn’t argue about the name change –
the adoption of my husband’s name would mean simply that I’d be higher up in
the alphabet and that I’d only have to correct my first and middle name – the
first name correction often stumps people alone: “a ‘k’ a ‘y’ and no ‘e’’ is my way of making
light of it. Or, ‘it’s only two
syllables.” No one famous or reputable
spells their name the way mine is spelled.
Not that it bothers me as I think that adding another syllable to a name
that only really requires two syllables and is less arrogant than “Katherine,”
or “Catherine” (most Katherines or Catherines wind up going by “Kate” as if
knowing full well that something is terribly wrong with taking up the value of
life and breath to devote it to unnecessary syllables. If Hemingway were alive, he’d probably agree
with this, but Hemingway seems to have thought that extra words were like extra
hims, and he edited both of them out which is why starting off short can be
advantageous. Though Kate isn’t an awful
diminutive. Kathy is, however, bad. Lesson learned from my mother that I would
never be a Kathy/Cathy – she taught me.
It was my first day of kindergarten. My teacher, Mrs. Rodermell (who I had to call
Mrs. Watermelon until I could recall her name), had all students wear a name
badge that hung from a piece of yarn around each of our little kindergarten kid
necks. My badge read, “Kathryn” and on
the opposite side of the little badge was the picture of an ice cream
cone. My mother stood behind me with
both of her hands on my shoulders, a position that gave me the odd sense that
she both had my back and was bracing me.
As a mother I think now that she was bracing herself - when my daughter
went to kindergarten, I cried.
“Hello, Kathy,” Mrs. Rodermell said. In return, my mother said (I imagine smiling the
way people do who know how to finesse any situation by nodding “yes” while
saying “no” with her perfect Linda Carter as Wonder Woman smile– they looked
exactly alike in the heyday of the network television series), “It’s
Kathryn.” Never again would somebody
slip up and I rarely (less so now because I sound like an ass) pass off the
very simplicity of it. “Kate” wouldn’t
have been so bad. And the only time I
let it go is when I’m a little scared of someone, or a little tired of
correcting people for name slaying in what I can only name as a culture of lazy
talk.
I have to say though, that it does make it easier to respect
a name by hoping friends, acquaintances and business contacts will take a
moment to get the correct spelling of a name.
It was once a sign of respect to spell a name. People used to ask. Perhaps the absence of writing – real cursive
– the intimacy of pen to paper, the necessity to wait between sending and
receiving or just receiving, has eliminated the respect of a name. Everything must be here and now and right and
uncorrectable.
Or perhaps people just hear what they want to hear.
Likely situation is that unique spellings are more than most
people can handle. To ask the correct
spelling can seem invasive to someone who simply is too shy to ask, or too self
consumed, or too busy, or too important in the way people see importance today
as more gain and zero loyalty because of less human contact. The front porch was once a form of
communication. A stroll around the neighborhood. Letters.
Jeanne, is my middle name.
My mother chose the French spelling of her mother’s name, which is
Jean. It is pronounced Jean in English,
but Johhhhn, in French (soft “J”). No
one got that part either. But it’s a
middle name so who cares? And my
grandmother didn’t fail to note that my mother spelled it wrong.
And then there’s “Merrifield”: Katherine Mansfield, Mary Field, Field,
Mary… It was truncated and morphed every
which way, so when I was married, changing my last name was somewhat of a
relief. Little did I know that everyone
carries their own cross with a name. My
mother divorced and married her way out of and into a couple of last names, so
I was determined to make my kids’ lives easier.
But we only know what we know, and when we’re young we have no idea what
a name, motherhood, marriage, divorce, and identity all mean to a woman. Parents always say that we’ll understand when
we’re older. We don’t understand until
it comes true and the events that supposedly make us stronger, quietly kill the
hope in ever after, and maybe a little louder bring us back to self.
(Pause before you continue.)
But it’s not as if my married name, “Boccardi,” was any
easier. If anything, what I thought
would be easier, was far more difficult than I ever imagined it would be. It’s a name that carried with it a sense of
strange royalty among those who shared it.
It silenced me, because my husband needed to be quiet to maintain that
name. It put me in a role that I
couldn’t live inside. It forced me to
keep the truth to myself and I hate to say it, but be a Boccardi.
(I hate rum.)
Yes, I had to correct anyone who spelled that name
incorrectly with, “No. Not like the
rum. It’s B-O…” During my divorce, I would joke that I needed
to get the stench off me. But then I
think of my kids and it’s their name, while still needing to have myself back
and shake it off. That self that had
also been discouraged to have a voice, but the self that finally had one. The self with a name everyone will always
misspell came back with absolutely zero fanfare or acknowledgment, which is
sort of why I like it. It’s just a name,
but it’s mine and it’s me.
Michael Ferrari of the Stamford AAA office said that he’d
advise his daughter, if she ever married, not to change her name to her
husband’s. He said that he felt so bad
for these women who get divorced – what they had to go through to change back
to their maiden names (as if the promise of being a maiden would be impetus
enough to withstand the insidious and murky paper trail required).
What Michael Ferrari did was gently direct me to the Social
Security office in Stamford, where I was able to finally start the process of
changing my name. I’ve been divorced for
a year, and the hurdle that prevented me from starting was my car lease,
financed from the same institution where I’d kept my money since moving to New
York eighteen years ago. The bank couldn’t
change my name to the maiden name I had on file without the driver’s license,
but I couldn’t change my driver’s license without confirmation that the bank acknowledged
my name change.
All documents needed for a name change:
Settlement agreement;
Notarized document from the court stating what your name
change will be if the greedy crapshoot of an attorney didn’t specify it in the
settlement document (no, I am not Cheryl Strayed);
If you don’t have the name change specified, then you have
to request that the court provide a document specifying the name change – a
form must be filled out, submitted with a birth certificate (mine was still
partly burned from the fire that occurred in my dad’s garage in California, and
where all eleven boxes containing my belongings was stored until I had a place
to put all of it in New York). Once this
document from the court is received, and you order another birth certificate
from the Department of Health and Human Services because the court decided to
keep the one you provided, the name change has to be published in a newspaper
of the court’s choice.
Once all of that is done, and you’ve spent a few ten to
twenty minute sessions on the phone yelling at the bank who finally becomes
convinced that, yes, you were unmarried at the time of opening a bank account
and that perhaps they can cross-check my bank accounts for my maiden name and
therefore change it to my maiden name using this information, it is possible to
change the social security information.
In the meantime, there’s Michael Ferrari.
After the social security card is received, I was finally
able to go to the court with the Affidavit from the Journal News and a court
document specifying my name change to get a new driver’s license. To further complicate matters, I was also
registering my leased car in the state of Connecticut (from New York), so after
presenting all documents, I had to return to the Department of Motor Vehicles
in Norwalk to change the registration after getting a VIN inspection and
telling Geico that given my address change I was also supposed to receive a
State of Connecticut insurance card, to present for the altered state of registration.
After all of that, I was able to get a new passport, using
the driver’s license to substantiate my identity. Now I’m simply left to worry that travel
situations out of the country will flag Homeland Security who’ll assume I’m
exporting and stealing my own children – we are no longer affiliated by
name. Joy.
Mostly now I just feel that the gag order has been lifted
and I can start healing. Friends closest
to me get it but very few understand.
Most know that I’m a California girl who loves what the northeast
provides for her heart and mind. “Merrifield”
to me means complexity and hurt, life hard-won and huge gains and losses. My name is my life. It’s what I live with every day. It’s my cross and I don’t want anyone else’s. What I want is what made me, me, as messed up
and damaged as I feel some days, as confused and lost and jaded, as hopeful and
happy and calm, as anxious and angry and sad – no matter what - it’s one thing
no one can take away from me, not in that way that it was removed and not in
the way that it allowed me to reject myself.
It’s the only thing that’s truly mine.
So, hello…
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