Alice
Scrubbed on hands all day, and my eyes strain to focus so much, especially after a week away - when I wore my glasses perhaps an hour a day.
This is balm for sore eyes. I've had a soft spot for Alice since high school. Before that, I hated absurdity and nonsense. After, in part because of my friend Steve*, I embraced the absurd, and perhaps so saved my sanity.
At some point my granny started calling herself - well now I can't remember if she was something other than Alice and wanted to be Alice, or if she was Alice and preferred to be - another name. Didn't matter to me, as I still called her Granny. But my mother was disdainful that she would call herself something other than on her birth certificate.
In this state, more often than not, people do not go by their first given name. Which is why I ask in pre-op - and it's either a nick name or a middle name, often not even one listed. I have no issue with this, be called what you like.
So, one of the advantages of not talking with my mother again is that I will not have to face her contempt for taking a middle name. I don't go by it, but I know it's there. Like my four tattoos - that she will never be told of either.
Going to watch Death in Paradise and Strip the City.
*You know, Steve. Just like Dave.
This is balm for sore eyes. I've had a soft spot for Alice since high school. Before that, I hated absurdity and nonsense. After, in part because of my friend Steve*, I embraced the absurd, and perhaps so saved my sanity.
At some point my granny started calling herself - well now I can't remember if she was something other than Alice and wanted to be Alice, or if she was Alice and preferred to be - another name. Didn't matter to me, as I still called her Granny. But my mother was disdainful that she would call herself something other than on her birth certificate.
In this state, more often than not, people do not go by their first given name. Which is why I ask in pre-op - and it's either a nick name or a middle name, often not even one listed. I have no issue with this, be called what you like.
So, one of the advantages of not talking with my mother again is that I will not have to face her contempt for taking a middle name. I don't go by it, but I know it's there. Like my four tattoos - that she will never be told of either.
Going to watch Death in Paradise and Strip the City.
*You know, Steve. Just like Dave.
Posted by Zhoen on Tuesday, February 12, 2013
8 comments:
In my mum's family it seemed almost obligatory to be called by a middle name, she hated her first name and one of the many humiliations of her old age and failing health was continually being called by it in administrative and healthcare situations, so bless you for always checking, these things matter.
Don't know why your mum gave you a middle name if she didn't think you should have the option of using it...
Oh, and hooray for Death in Paradise!
I knew from the first time I read "Alice in Wonderland" that it was a book I would love.
My mother in law had so many names that my husband had to sign a special document with them all in, when he came to administer her estate!
Lucy
She didn't give me one. I took on my Aunt's name as a middle name when I changed to D's last name.
Jenny,
I had to get to the right age, but it's as perennial as the grass since.
Was she Spanish? Or noble? Or just had very creative parents?
As you can easily fathom, I'm all about the absurd.
Phil,
You do remind me a bit of Steve*.
*You know, Steve.
Sorry, didn't read properly.
Lucy,
Well, I didn't write clearly.
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