What’s in a Name?

While walking through Arlington Cemetery, I noticed a headstone for a woman named Cinderella Church. I first noticed it because CINDERELLA was in capital letters at the top of the marker, almost like a last name, and that startled me. You don’t expect to find the name of a Disney princess on a gravestone. (Turns out, Cinderella is the wife of a serviceman, whose last name will be engraved at the top on the opposite side.)

What would it be like to go through life with a name like Cinderella? I was so taken with this notion that I came home and did some Googling to learn more about her. She is not alone. There are many people named Cinderella.

Cinderella Church and I are not too far apart in age; only seven years separate us. She grew up in the 50s, born just four years after the release of the original Disney movie in 1950. Were her parents fans? Cinderella Church has a sister named Stella Cinderella, so I’m going to guess that they were.

Cinderella and I grew up in an age without videos and DVDs, so the princess images weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today. Our only connection would been via The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night and the Rogers and Hammerstein musical with Lesley Ann Warren in the title role, along with the usual branded merchandise. Cinderella’s Magic Castle at Disney World wasn’t built until 1971, when Cinderella Church would have been 18. Did she ever go there? I wonder.

I would love to know what it was like to go through school in the 50s and 60s with a name like Cinderella. Did the boys tease her? Were the girls envious? What did she wear to prom? Did she like her name?

Cinderella went by Cindy, according to her obituary. Was it a result of not wanting to be called Cinderella? Did her parents start the trend? I am often called Kathy. People automatically assume I shorten my name; it drives me nuts. I have always been Kathleen, named after Kathleen Doonan Zahalka, my grandmother’s sister and my mother’s favorite aunt. Family folklore has it that I was always to be Kathleen, long before there was a baby to name. When my father announced to my three brothers that they had a baby sister, there were comments like, “We’ll call the baby Kathy… Katie… Kate!” Whereupon, my father proclaimed, “We will call the baby Kathleen.” Period. No discussion. My dad was not one to proclaim such absolutes, so I guess everyone took notice when he did.

I know there have been warehouses of studies done on the impact of names of kids. Does one name guarantee greater social standing or a higher likelihood of better test scores or a better job? Depends on which study you read. Are we likely to have a rash of corporate execs named Blue Ivy in a few decades? Will there be a spike in Georges across Britain? I have a friend who didn’t name her child until the hospital told her she couldn’t be discharged until the baby had a legal name. When I asked my friend about the delay, she said, “I wanted to get to know her first to make sure her name fit.”

When you think of Cinderella, what images spring to mind? Before yesterday, I would have conjured up Lesley Ann Warren with her smudgy cheeks singing at the hearth, followed by a blonde cartoon princess in a blue dress with a couple of seamstress mice in her pocket. But yesterday’s random encounter has made me step back and think about people behind the names. And believe me, in Arlington Cemetery, there are literally thousands opportunities for this.  

Big Man to the Rescue

Again, blogging mostly in my head with a promise to write a couple of times a week. I went so far as to follow @AdvicetoWriters on Twitter, and many of the quotes from famous authors inspire me. Pretty soon, I hope to act on this inspiration.

Last week, I was walking down a street near my house that I’ve walked down many times. It was a hot muggy day, made worse by a recent rain. I was cranky. It just hadn’t been a good day on many fronts, and it felt like one of those days where nothing was ever going to go right again. I try to live positively, not because it sounds like some catchphrase, but because I think it’s good for my health and those around me. But some days, I'm not very good at it.

On this cranky day, I was crankily crabbing my way down the street when I literally (and yes, I know how to use this word) stopped in my tracks. It was the smell. There was a pink-blooming mimosa tree, one like had been in our backyard growing up on Willow Glen. In that second, I was transported to about 1967 and transfixed by that smell. In that place, I smelled the “playhouse” that my dad built next to the pink-blooming mimosa tree in the backyard. Truth be told, it wasn’t exactly a playhouse, but more of a big wooden shed where my dad kept his lawnmower and tools and lawn chairs and stuff. But I commandeered part of it as a playhouse.

It had one single double-hung window on one side and opposite that, a dutch door that I thought was the most exotic thing I'd ever seen. I thought my dad was the absolute trickiest man in the world for building that shed. Sometimes, my mom would let us eat lunch out there, sitting in lawnchairs, balancing our tunafish sandwiches and Golden Age grape soda on our laps. We played in it for hours, even on rainy days.

It wasn’t the cleanest place in the world, but I didn’t care. There was sand or mud on the floor, along with the lawnmower tracks. There were the inevitable chinaberries and mimosa flowers blown under the door. (Now that I think about it, there were probably lizards in there.)

It smelled like wood. It smelled damp and musty all the time. It smelled of cut grass stuck in the blades of the lawnmower, and it smelled faintly of gasoline. But it also smelled like that damp, fragrant mimosa tree, a smell I hadn’t smelled in decades.

I just stood there, breathing in that smell and all those others my brain had somehow suddenly released. My bad day vanished.

The late, great Clarence Clemons said, “The universe gives you what you need; you just have to be there to accept it.”

I'm Positive I'm Negative

I don't know when I wrote this post. Several weeks ago, I guess. But I didn't post it, probably because it felt whiny. But if I'm going to be blog, then I have to accept that it's not all rainbows and unicorns. 

I spend a lot of time blogging. Mostly in my head. I realize that my plan to blog weekly fell flat. Probably because I didn’t tell anyone (okay two people knew, but only one has the URL) and so I didn’t have any accountability. I didn’t tell anyone because then I’d have to be accountable.

See what I did there?

I feel like going public opens me up to criticism, and I cannot take it now. And of course, then that makes me ask the obvious question, “Why are you even doing it?”

I dunno. Because. Because internal conversations are where I work out issues in my world. Because writing is what I’ve done my whole life, and it feels like my safety zone when I do it.

If you didn’t already figure it out, I am unemployed. In fact, I’m what is now termed the “long-term unemployed.” I’d tell you the whole story of how I came to this place but you probably wouldn’t believe it. 

I’ve learned some things in the last year, some good, some not. My spirit has been battered in a way I didn’t see coming. I have discovered that I possess the key to unbattering it. (Unbattering? Is that even a word?) I’ve learned that the key doesn’t work every single day.