So I never liked my last name growing up.
Schwartz
One syllable, one vowel, lots of consonants.
My sister and I were the only ones with it in grade school.
Come middle school and a whole bunch of new kids.
Lots of Schwartzes, none of us related.
I never liked introducing myself, either.
Didn’t like the sound of my own name in my own mouth.
The sound of it on the lips of others
still odd to me, strange.
Always feeling accusatory at first, second
…
I’d changed it to take my first husband’s name, Block.
Which wasn’t even his, really.
Block.
ugh.
Got rid of him and his fool name.
Back to Schwartz by default.
The second one, Aubert.
OH-bear.
(don’t marry a rebound, people. It doesn’t end well.)
“Best thing in my life right now,” I told him on the phone as I was leaving the DMV,
“is getting my own name back on my license.”
Accurate, but certainly not kind.
Unnecessary to say. I’m sorry now that I did then.
The third one, though, the third one stayed up.
Hoffman.
What if I hyphenated it?
Schwartz-Hoffman jfc no thank you that’s a mouthful.
We discussed combining our surnames,
this wonderfully wonky man of mine.
Schwartzman. Or…
Hoffartz.
I mean.
Truly.
In the end I decided that I wanted to be Mrs. Hoffman.
And since I decided (upon resolving my second mistake)
that my signature would be a mononym forevermore
signing it like
Cher or
Madonna
somehow it got easier to say my own name.
Lysa.
Like lovely.
Lysa with a Y.
(watch the furrowed brow as they try to put that together
where? where does the Y go?)
On facebook I dropped my middle name in favor
of putting my maiden name there
(maiden name! ooo how archaic!)
yet it annoys me beyond reason when people use that entire name.
Lysa Schwartz Hoffman
because that is not who I am.
I am
Lysa Hoffman.
When I berate myself it’s usually to say
“c’mon Schwartz, hustle up”
liking that name now, perhaps only as an afterthought,
but feeling comfortable in it.
so today, feeling a measure of all the things you’re supposed to feel at thanksgiving
and more content and pleased with my comfort in my evolution
I changed my name again, relegating (Schwartz)
and elevating myself to who I decided to be when I married Gary.
I finally got there, here.
Train’s not staying, though,
she’s moving forward.
taking my name with me into the night.
Because what other comfort is there
than knowing my true name?
The Salty Widow 