bearing the name

It’s a long drive across New York. On the way, you pass exits for Cairo, Delhi, Bethlehem and Troy, Amsterdam, Rome, Liverpool and Geneva, Bath and Babylon, Cambridge, Carthage, and Corinth, Jamaica, Manchester, Versailles and Valhalla, Lima, Greece, and Greenwich. In most cases, the name is the only thing they have in common with their twins abroad; maybe, if they’re lucky (or desperate), some long-forgotten history or a founder from the namesake.

I-90 heading for Boston. Take the Arlington exit. There’s an Arlington in Minnesota too. And New York. Also Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee and Washington. Iowa has an Aplington, a mere typo, no doubt, and Illinois has Arlington Heights. Apparently Arlington, whatever or whoever it was, had some great impact on American history—now, that impact is lost on myself and probably most people I would talk to.

It means different things to us now.

***

My name is Clara Swanson. It’s the name of my Swedish great-grandmother, and there was one other Clara in the family before me. (She descended from a girl cousin, though, so her last name is Rapson.) Five years ago, when the extended family got together, my second cousin David called during church to announce the birth of his daughter – Clara Swanson. Like me, she can easily project how old she will be at any given family reunion (in multiples of five); she is an unbridled spirit (and I pray that no one tries to break her); and she busts a move at the slightest suggestion of a beat.

I passed by her lunch table at this summer’s reunion and her family said, “Oh, YOU’RE the other Clara Swanson! She’s been dying to meet you!” I had been dying to meet her, too, but at the actual prospect of such an anticipated meeting we both suddenly became very shy. We greeted each other and I didn’t linger long, but walked away with the odd feeling that I had just shaken hands with myself.

I remember when Grandma Clara died. I was five, and I stood next to my cousin Paula while they lowered her coffin into the ground. I remember the exact moment of understanding what was happening, when I looked around and realized that a lot of people I knew very well were crying. I remember wondering what they knew that I didn’t know, feeling that I should be crying too. I teared up—but I stopped myself, thinking how stupid it would be to start crying just because everybody else was. Then someone threw dirt into the hole, onto the coffin, and I realized that Grandma Clara, the 100% Swedish, 98-year-old version of myself, was not going to get out of that box and spend time with me ever again.

***

My name is Clara Lee Swanson. The Lee is on my mom’s side. I carry the patriotic legacy, in my name and on my government-issued ID, of an illustrious old Southern family. From Gram-B, a legendary link in our history: my great-grandmother, Allene Lee.

In fifth grade, I developed a penchant for tragedy, specifically the sinking of the Titanic and the so-called American Civil War. Maybe it was just a fascination with history, with the history of people, which through some lenses seems like a long series of tragedies and their resolutions. Anyway, my mom mentioned in passing that I was somehow distantly related to the great General Robert E. Lee, a piece of information I took back to class and announced during an educational visit of a representative from the Sons of the Civil War. He blinked, looked down, cleared his throat and after collecting himself managed to say coldly, “Yes, well, there is also a group called Daughters of the Confederacy.” I struggled for years with his dismissal before finally deciding that General Lee was a tactical genius and a man of good character, and that I was proud to be the eight-times-great-granddaughter of his brother Henry.

***

In some cases—online, and in my notebooks from high school, and, in theory, on the cover of a novel or a book of poetry someday—my name is Clara de Tierra. It was the Shot Heard Around the World in my personal War of Independence. I desperately needed to find my place as a citizen of the world, beyond the several countries I could claim as my father- or mother- or brother-sisterland, beyond belonging to my father because I bear his name—I wanted to identify myself as a human being living in unfathomable society with the rest of my (absolutely fascinating) species. Plus, it seemed like a good way to integrate my official traditional Ecuadorian name (Clara Lee Swanson Buckner) into my life in the States, without cutting out my mom’s Indian influence. By changing my name, even unofficially, I ceased to be Clara Lee, son of Sven, and became Clara, daughter of the earth and everything else.

At the time my favorite writer and greatest inspiration was Madeleine L’Engle, author of the Wrinkle in Time series and a ridiculous number of other books (I have by now more or less exhausted them). I was reading the first Crosswicks journal, which chronicled one of her summers spent at a rambling, teetering manor in smalltown New York with several generations of family members popping in and out at various intervals. Her husband, Hugh, was an actor whose last name was Franklin; she took his name when they were married, but on the covers of her books she remained always Madeleine L’Engle, because how can anyone make a name for themselves if they just go changing it every other novel or so?

I took this detail to heart and thought it was high time I think ahead to the days when I would no longer belong in name to my father but to some other man; and decided instead to take matters into my own hands and foray into the world with a blank slate and some extra space in my name. That way, I could safely create a name for myself without instigating any political uprisings among the men in my life…

And besides, Clara de Tierra rhymes.

***

I do not have a name like Dessa or Shihan or Felony. At the National Poetry Slam, established poets take the stage to speak their word. In a still-unfamiliar poetry culture, the pre-poem silence fills up with shouts of “C’mon, poet!” The Slam is not about fame, so it’s not about a name. It’s about poetry. It’s about the Word. So each of its speakers is just that: one piece of the poetic stereo. One letter of the Word. One soloist in the chorus and one shout in the crowd.

“Yeah poet!” So they speak. About themselves, but for the world. For our shared experience.

***

One late-August morning, almost exactly three years ago, I sat in a diner in Rome (New York) with Nate, Elisabeth, and Dave Preisinger. I’d known Nate for a long time, since we were both on the Foothills Regional LYO board, but I was feeling shy then that he was where Elisabeth and I are now—entering his senior year at St. Olaf College. “Actually, I’m kind of jealous of you guys,” he said with theatrical enthusiasm. “You get to start fresh. You can be whoever you want to be. You can change your personality completely! You could even change your name!”

At that, Elisabeth’s dad and brother started suggesting the most farfetched nicknames they could think of. “What about Eli?” Dave cackled, and we all tried it out. “Do you think it would actually stick?” Nobody could imagine people actually calling her that.

Three years later, people at St. Olaf ask me if I know Eli Preisinger.

And Math Matt, for the life of him, can’t remember my real name—he still calls me Scheherazade.