In response to my post When Grace Looks Like a Homeless Guy, a reader named Nancy left a comment that broadened my perspective about being at home. She said we are “being cloistered, not quarantined.” I spent a day afterwards thinking how much I liked cloistered, and its implications, better than quarantined. Cloistered is safe, which continues to be comforting as COVID marches on. By renaming it, Nancy reframed the whole experience.
Then within two days of Nancy’s comment, once while reading and and another time watching a PBS program, naming things came up again.
I was reading Padraig O’Tuama’s book In the Shelter: Finding a home in the world, in which he writes: “To name something is to begin a relationship with it. … To be named is to be summoned into being, and to name is to participate in this project of living.”
Then I was watching an episode of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s PBS show Finding Your Roots in which actress S. Epatha Merkerson’s ancestry was researched. When she turned the page to see her family tree, including her enslaved ancestors, she looked up in amazement and said “They have names. That’s amazing. They have names.” They were summoned into being, no longer abstractions, when they had names.
Giving a name to something helps me get my head around it and manage my relationship with it. This has served me well lately. It’s helped me understand and manage my expectations of certain appliances (naming something a “cheap POS” instead of a dishwasher, for example) and people. We like to name relationships we have with people – my bestie, my boss, my ex. Names define boundaries, and sometimes I need to be reminded of those boundaries.
People who don’t want to be defined as one of only two choices are summoning their true selves into being, participating in the project of living, by naming themselves with different pronouns or genders or a mix of both. About two years ago, my beloved and brilliant child came out as transgender. While her outward appearance is transformed and she changed her pronoun, she has chosen to keep the name her father and I gave her (it is an unusual name and she tries to keep a low profile, so I’m not using it here). She feels connected to it and hasn’t found anything she feels describes who she is more than the name we chose for her. And I am grateful. We chose well.
Some deny that she has a right to choose the name that describes her. She has nonbinary friends who use one name or gender with some people, and a different name or gender with others, depending on the level of acceptance among each. Some won’t use her or her friends’ preferred pronouns – it’s not a matter of an occasional slip. I was recently asked by a person who will not use her preferred pronoun why it mattered. Because a deliberate non-use of her preferred pronoun is denying her a right to define her own identity and make her own choices; it is denying her the respect she deserves as a human.
To name something is to claim ownership of it. To name our circumstances, our relationships, and ourselves gives us ownership and control. We begin our relationship, as O’Tuama wrote, but even more than that, we assert our place in that relationship.
As always, thanks for reading and please get in touch or leave a comment if you want to join the conversation. Nancy, thanks for sharing the seed that grew into this post.
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