What Is In a Name?

All of the women in this picture share my name. I have been googling. I googled several of my old friends that I no longer keep in touch with -- just to see if I could find them. I did not find anything substantial about any of them. Then I wondered, what would my old friends find if they googled my name? They might find that I have become a well respected feminist theologian, or a neurobiologist, a taxi driver, a music teacher, a realtor, a radiologist, attorney, artist, anthropologist, political science professor at Yale. . .

Of course, I am none of these things.

Saturday Afternoon

We talked about regrets and identity
over tepid cups of milky tea
satiated
this languid afternoon interrupted only by
slamming doors
the children came and the children went unconcerned
their wet hair fragrant with the first chlorinated taste of summer
with hints of jasmine lingering in the air every time the door was left ajar.
The cats snaked back into the house flopping sloppily on cool wood floors sobered by the heat that kept us indoors watching with envy as the shadows crept across the lawn.
We were deceived.
The monarchs in the bushes, the breeze in the trees
There was no comfort in the garden today – only the heat.

We have a past and a future
And are still trying to come to peace with who we are and who we thought we would be.
This is a recurrent theme extending our adolescence into middle age
Wizened questions unanswered by our mature unwillingness to make assumptions about anything – we know better than that after what we have been through and what we can now surmise
It takes so much more to be surprised
It is easier to see the changes in others than the changes in ourselves
Our temperaments unaltered by time despite experience
Choices may change but our hearts remain
the same.