December 17, 2016: Somebody’s pretty happy I’m Mrs. Smith. Actually, two somebodies.
So much about divorce is awful, even when it is the right thing and eventually leads you to a much better match. There is a commercial for a family law firm in Denver, a commercial I dislike. Because it starts out, “There is never a right time for divorce…”
There is a right time for divorce, it just doesn’t make it less awful. Because it is always the death of a dream, and in particular, the dream you had for your children. Zero people think, “Boy, I sure hope one day my married kids will have to eat Thanksgiving dinner four times in order to accommodate all four of their collective parents and their new spouses, some of whom avoid speaking to each other entirely!”
My divorce took some time to finalize, not because we were fighting over possessions, or anything really at that point. It was because of the kids. We waited until one more of them was over eighteen. By the time we got divorced officially, both of us were very much with other people. Our collective children - nine of them, between four people - were all seeing better examples of relationships. (There is right time for divorce.)
I wasn’t going to change my name until I married Mike. Who wants to do that twice? Within a year? Except…it started not to feel like who I was, anymore. It bothered Mike, and it was starting to bother me. So I did it. Twice. Two new driver’s licenses, new debit cards, and a bunch of other hassles.
“It’s easy,” Mike said. “The judge will just ask you if you want to go back to your maiden name and you tell him yes.” Easy for Mike to say, as he had never changed his name nor had any expectation of doing so. But I did it anyway, even though that name had its own history. I had been writing on the internet for two decades under that name. My college degree is in that name. And at the time, it was the name all my children had.
This was largely why I had taken it in the first place, as part of a dream and a new family. It shows the world that you all belong to each other. I had wanted to make things easy, and also, I really don’t like having a hard to understand and pronounce first name and last name. I spent a year doing it anyway, suddenly reminded of how much I preferred explaining that my name was spelled “like it sounds” to having to spell it out exactly like my mom. “P as in Peter, U-L, S as in Sam…”
It’s hard, though, not having the same name as your children. It makes you feel like the history that was you is not there anymore. Like it’s just…gone. I could have kept my maiden name in the first place. Or I could have hyphenated. But that was never my dream.
I am not mentioned by name in my dad’s journal. In his defense, it is short, and he started with his family of birth and his childhood memories, and mostly stopped after his first year of college. He was probably going to get back to it, sometime. Not in his defense: He died in 1985 and he stopped writing in 1978. We make time for what’s important. He mentions Tim, though. Timothy John Pulsipher. Tim’s whole name. I am a footnote. “I have three children, and one on the way.” Maybe I would have been mentioned had my dad gone beyond 1961, and maybe not. But he was telling his own story, a story where I am a footnote.
Mike was worried that he could be erased from his kids’ lives entirely. That he could lose all custody, and that their last name could be changed. I laughed a little at the possibility of Smith, the most common last name in America (and Canada, and England, and Australia), dying out because his children were no longer Smiths. And then I realized he was really scared about this and it was not so funny.
He was not scared without cause. Gaslighting is such a buzzword these days and gets thrown around all the time, but I have seen it in real time. Watched people imply that Mike was paranoid about this, crazy to worry that this could happen, as they actively tried to make it happen.
Soren brought home an almost-ready-to-turn-in family history paper, written for him by a family member. Not on Mike’s side, obviously. Because it detailed both sets of grandparents and mom, who apparently had a Virgin Mary-like experience in order for Soren to appear on the earth, because his dad was not mentioned at all. You wouldn't even know he had one, though Mike had equal custody at the time. And Soren is the very image of him too.
This wasn’t going to stand on my watch. Step-mom fixed it and wrote Mike into the story. In the version he turned in, Soren had a dad. By the way, Mike was literally dying of cancer at the time, going through brutal, debilitating chemotherapy. It sounds cartoonish, doesn’t it? But it happened.
Men get erased too, but women have been getting erased for a lot longer. What did my grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother do? Who was her mom? Because I’m pretty sure Mike’s ancestors were making horseshoes and nails and Dave/id’s lived by that Barn. The one on the hill. Somebody on my mom’s side’s dad was Hans, and he had a son. At least one anyway. No one actually knows what Pulsipher means, but we all know that men passed it down, not their wives. It was my dad’s dad’s name. And his dad before him, all the way to Benedict Pulsipher who came to Massachusetts in the 1630s. Who was his wife, before?
I’m not angry about it. Not exactly. But where are the women?
I am here, telling my story, and Mike’s, to anyone who will listen, doing it like it’s my job, so maybe in the thirteenth century - if I’d lived then and things were different - my children (and their children) could all have the last name Writer. Instead of the other common choice, Blythedaughter.
Let me tell you what I wish I'd known
When I was young and dreamed of glory
You have no control
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
I cry my way through this song the first time I hear Lin Manuel Miranda sing it (as Alexander Hamilton, of course). I think he’s partly right. You have no control over who lives and dies (if I did, some things would be very different). But you sometimes have control over who tells your story. Mike married a story-teller. I think he had some help with that; he was not the only person who wanted me to tell his story. Marrying a storyteller is not without hazards, because storytellers sometimes tell all the stories. But if you marry one, you are still doing some choosing.
You can also be one. I tell my story. And Mike’s.
I actually love being Blythe Smith, for lots of reasons. I love that it is my husband’s name, the part that lives on with me. I love that he loved that I had his name. I love that finally, blissfully, I rarely have to spell it. I love that it is the most common last name in America and I don’t have to explain it, love that people would say “Mr. and Mrs. Smith? I saw the movie about you.” Smith is a man’s name. But they all are, unless you make a new one up. My maiden name was a man’s name too.
I could have kept the same name my children have, the one I had for twenty-six years. I could have kept my dad’s name too, because lots of people do. I picked a man’s name, in the end. The man who made me feel the most seen. The man who cared that I had his name.
And I tell my story. And his. Because part of my watch is making sure neither of us is erased. Because names are power, but stories are too.
I wonder sometimes if my ex understood that he was marrying a storyteller and what might ensue after that. Haha!