If I Could Change My Name

Patricia Anne. I hear my mother’s exasperation. Patricia Anne means trouble; it is demeaning. I become a small child and I feel my shoulders shrink. It is angry red and cowering yellow at the same time, like the flag of the old South Vietnam. My grandmother claimed that Anne was after her. She claimed my name but never me. I always knew it wasn’t after her; her name was Anna and the a at the end was accented and pronounced. She carried the name like an ostrich feather- plumed hat upon her head. The e at the end of my name is silent and unnoticed like a cap the color of my hair.

Patricia comes from the word patrician. It is noble. It is the queen at tea with her pinky unnecessarily pointing outward. Patricia is unnecessary. Two many syllables for a one syllable person. I am a short gong tap and not three.

Patty is the affectionate version of Patricia but also rhymes with fatty—unacceptable as sitting on the table at a formal dinner. There are only two people who can get away with calling me Patty. My husband and my older sister. If someone calls me Patty it is because they have heard my husband refer to me too often.

Pat is a bounce. It is a quick tap in a steel pointed black shoe. Yet it is easy and forming the sounds are the beginnings of blowing a kiss. It is the default name I chose for myself.

While picking up my adorable grandson at the airport, he called me Kiki. "Your name is Kiki!" he said. And so, if my grandson calls me Kiki, I will wear that name comfortably, like a loose and colorful mumu.

My fourteen-year-old calls me Patrish-delish; she bestowed this name upon me in the way that only a last cherished child can talk to a parent. Respect has all but disappeared like helium escaping from a balloon. But playfulness has taken its place and therefore, if I could change my name it would be to Patrish-delish.