Thanks, Vanilla Cupcake for your contribution to my writing challenge. Vanilla Cupcake suggested I take the 100 Themes from the wallpaper challenge and use them as keywords. So I probably won't be short on ideas for a while. Here you go: Name.

Traditionally, girls change their names when they marry. They take their husband's, and that's the name they give to their children. They leave behind the name they once had. I find this idea unimaginable. I am, and have always been, Sara Ann (last name) and that's what has been ingrained in my mind. Sara Ann (last name) is a writer and she is an artist and she likes calligraphy and dogs and making people laugh by telling dirty jokes. She's scared of wasps and she hates math and she is so much more. That's me. Taking on another name would be like starting a new life as someone else at middle age--starting over to establish who Sara Ann (new last name) was. I wouldn't be able to respond to it because it would be my husband's really. It would come from his family, and I have no past with them. Until I meet them they have played no significant role in my life. My childhood was defined by those of the (last name) clan. I was taught their history and extrapolated lessons from their stories. Sara Ann (last name) is what's on my birth certificate. It's who I was born. Being Sara Ann (new last name) would mark me as being different from that baby girl. I mean, of course I am not the same as her, having grown, learned, experienced, seen, heard, thought, read, laughed, cried, bonded, and explored. But she was the Sara Ann (last name) waiting to become me, the Sara Ann (last name) of now. That is the name on all the stories I wrote. Some other Sara didn't write those, my hand, my mind, did. Look at the name on my middle school graduation certificate, my high school diploma. Sara Ann (last name) completed those years, had those experiences, did the work and learned the lessons she would take with her on her journey. That same name is on my confirmation certificate from church. It was Sara Ann (last name) who attended sermons and studied religious history all those years, prayed and questioned and learned and developed her carefully chosen faith and beliefs and moral code. She did that. Not some other Sara. It's the name on my certificate from my art show entry, from all my poems and stories that got published in the local newspaper, from all my writings that were chosen for the school's literary magazine, including my third-place winning entry. It's the name I've learned to spell out over the phone and to bank tellers and teachers and everyone else because I know they'll spell it wrong. It's the name on my student I.D. and my learner's permit, the name that will go on my license, the name under every single picture in every single yearbook I've owned. The kindergartner with short golden hair and a round face and her dad's eyes, the second grader growing her hair out long and silky and grinning her gap-toothed grin, the sixth-grader with her favorite headband and her new plastic-framed glasses, the high-school freshman with her wild unruly waves, her awkward, shy, crooked smile not yet corrected by braces because she's still got a couple baby teeth. The pretty junior with her hair cut short and styled for the first time in years, her face thinner and more defined, wearing her pretty turquoise blouse and brackets on her teeth. The senior in the funky watch pants, smiling into the sunlight above the quote "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good". These memories, these people, they are me, they are the Sara Ann (last name) of that time. they are mine. And my mistakes, my lessons learned the hard way, the things I've lost and earned back? They're mine too. My flaws and fears, mine. I will not escape them by becoming someone else, by becoming Sara Ann (new last name) instead. I can't make a new person perfect. Sara Ann (last name) is learning who she is and she knows she's far from perfect. So this is who I am, and this is who I'll always be, and if my husband doesn't like it, he can take on mine. After all, I believe it is a good one.