Reflections on Sense of Direction

"It's that way, mom!" I shouted, pointing at the right branch of the fork in the road.
"I don't know," she responded, "I think it's the other way."

We were a tad lost in New Jersey and I was a giddy 7 year old anxious to get to the beach. The right branch seemed to take us to a lower elevation and the trees seemed to thin out, so even though I had no proof, it just felt like that was the way to the ocean.

But my mom went the other way. Soon she realized she wasn't getting closer to our destination and stopped for directions. This was 1984, before everyone had cell phones and gps. No we were relying on a good old fashioned paper map--you know, the kind you can unfold but then never figure out quite how to refold properly. 

Anyhow, it turned out that I had been right. Had my mother listened to me, my intuitive sense of direction would have led us straight to the beach.  She marveled at this briefly but to me it had seemed obvious.

Ah the 80s, when kids like me roamed around for hours in the woods unsupervised til our moms called us for dinner. And not "called us" on our mobile phones but "called us" as in shouted our names repeatedly throughout the neighborhood. If you took too long getting home you would get an earful, so it helped to know all the shortcuts through the forest, especially when you had a penchant for wandering much farther than your mom probably realized.

My sister and I and some of the neighbor kids would sometimes play kickball, but what we really loved to do was explore. We would pretend we were trailblazers on a new frontier and go deeper and deeper into the wild. We soon learned that the easiest paths were to stay near the creek that wound through the trees. This creek was a tributary of Brush Creek (aka Bushy Run) which was a tributary of Turtle Creek which flowed into the Monongahela River which joined up with the Allegheny River in nearby Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. The Ohio River then ultimately dumps into the Mississippi River whose basin is the deltas in New Orleans which flow out to the Gulf of Mexico.

I had never been to New Orleans (still haven't) but as a child I was utterly fascinated with how things were connected. It was so cool for me to contemplate sending a message in a bottle down our little creek and thinking that maybe one day it would be found by a child in Louisiana.  I was also naturally drawn to the water. Creeks, streams, rivers, lakes, and especially the sea called to my heart. I could spend hours listening to the water rush down a stream or the waves crashing to the shore. I felt at home wading, swimming and splashing. I never wanted to leave the water, even at a pool. When my mom would try to tell me it was time to get out of my grandparents' pool or the ymca pool, I would sneak under the water, acting like I didn't hear her-she literally had to drag me out! And when my recurrent ear infections would flare up I wouldn't tell my mom that my ears hurt because I didn't want to miss my swim lesson-I ended up needing tubes in my ears as a result. But every second I could spend in or near the water was worth it in my young mind.

So as we tread upon the deer paths near our neighborhood creek we would "discover" "new" features, mainly "waterfalls." We'd mark how far our explorations had taken us based on the number of waterfalls.we'd passed since the common entrance to the woods. If you passed waterfall #1 you'd embarked on a sizable journey, but if you made it to waterfall #2, you had done some serious exploring. Then there was the rare occasion when you could brag "I made it past waterfall #3!"

I believe these early explorations along with my natural attraction to water were what allowed me to sense which way it was to the ocean that summer day. Besides, I could just smell the sea with our car windows rolled down and notice which way the ocean breeze seemed to be blowing the leaves on the trees. It wasn't magic or divine intervention that told me, but rather, paying attention to nature's subtleties.

As I got older, I learned more about geography. I loved studying maps. Like those days in the woods, I turned my map into a journey. I imagined taking various roads or highways and pictured the towns and cities I would pass through. I would use the map's legend to give me an idea how big the town was, whether the road was two or four lanes, if there were parks or bodies of water nearby. I soon learned that many back roads seemed to meander along rivers or streams just as my paths through the woods meandered along the creek. I noticed that major highways more often took direct routes but sometimes had to wind around mountains or tunnel through them. I became proficient at estimating the distance from one place to another and even using the mileage markings to optimize a driving route from point a to point b. I could also come up with alternate routes in case of traffic or construction. And I could tell you which way was most likely to give you the most scenic route to your destination. All of this I could do long before I was old enough to drive.

Yet on vacations my mom & stepdad never listened to me. Every year they would have their maps and their AAA trip ticks and still get confused somewhere and end up arguing about which way to go. I gave up trying to talk sense into them and just tried to stay out of it.

Nor did they take my suggestion of booking a hotel room at a decent logical midpoint of our journey on two day drives. Instead, my stepdad insisted he did not want to be obligated to stop at some "arbitrary" point but wanted to see how far we could get the first day and then find lodging. It reminds me now a little of my 8 yr old holding her need to use the bathroom until she's desperate and then assuming there will always be a restroom available.

The flaw in this logic seems obvious, yet it took my stepdad seemingly by surprise one year when we were driving back from Florida. When he finally agreed we had driven far enough the first day, it was rather late and we were in Va.  We stopped at hotel after hotel but they were all without vacancies.  We kept driving north as we searched... and it got later and later... and eventually we were in WV...still no vacancies.  Finally my stepdad gave up and decided to just push through til we got home...  Thus he ended up driving the whole journey all at once and we arrived home at around 5:00AM.  It was absurd and completely avoidable.

The summer after I graduated from high school I got my driver's license and shortly thereafter entered college in the mid 90s, attending a small school in the central Pennsylvania Amish country.  It was the era of cheap gas and when my mom bought a new car she gave me her old 1989 Acura Integra and I used to take it on countless road trips.  My college sweetheart and I would spontaneously decide to drive to Maryland or New Jersey or just some obscure little town in Pennsylvania.  All we ever took with us were snacks and our PA Atlas and Gazetteer.  And we always found our way around.  People were amazed at our exhaustive knowledge of PA geography--we could pretty much tell you where just about any random town in PA was located.

When we married a few weeks after college graduation, we decided to drive to Sedona, Arizona for our honeymoon, a 2,000 mile trek.  We explored all over AZ for a week, and on the way home, we purposely took a different route home so that we could see more of the country along the way.  We never got lost.

When we separated and I took a job in Florida, I thought nothing of driving back to PA alone to visit family.  I also took random road trips alone when I lived in FL.  I loved going to St. Augustine (which was a really straightforward journey), but I also drove to Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando, and all over Brevard County where I lived.

Over the years, I continued collecting state atlases and using them to find state parks and campgrounds for cheap road trips.  Eventually, I did start using google maps, too, but usually just to plan my tentative route, always leaving re-routing options open in my mind for spontaneous changes of plan or to avoid congestion. The latest technological innovation of smart phones has allowed me to avoid traffic before I even get stuck in it, since google has real-time traffic, and I can re-route before we get snarled in it.  That said I hate GPS and never plan to own one.  I don't like to be told where to go and just follow like a mindless robot, thank you. I have driven alone to Chicago, Myrtle Beach, New York, Baltimore, Allentown, and countless other places.  I've also walked alone while pregnant all over Manhattan.  I can handle it and I trust my sense of direction.

So when my new husband's parents worriedly kept calling us when we were on our way to DC for my brother-in-law's wedding, to be sure to give us detailed directions, I thought they were just being overprotective of their youngest (my husband).  Thankfully he just went along with it, "yeah, yep," etc. but we were writing nothing down.  The route there was ridiculously straightforward.  I was not sure how anyone could possibly get lost on such a journey.  As we got closer to the metro area, though, the red spots started popping up on google traffic, as I had anticipated they might.  I'd already selected a plan b, and a plan c and d to re-route around traffic.  We had to go with plan c, due to plan b becoming red the closer we got.  But it was very simple to do, and even though it took us through a residential area with speed bumps and stop signs, we got there much faster than we would have if we'd have blindly stuck with plan a or whatever major highway directions my well-intentioned mother-in-law was giving us.

Then I came to learn that it's more than just overprotection motivating my in-laws.  When my husband showed me the typed up directions to their condo in the Outer Banks, I was just like, "wow, really??" They had sent them to be sure we had every step laid out and everyone's phone number in case of emergency. He went on to explain that they had a whole vacation binder of info at their house.

I was awe-struck. Part of me admired their planning ahead (unlike the family vacations I experienced growing up). But mostly I felt it was very ocd of them. I thought about the almost ritualistic vacation traditions they followed, as described to me by my husband, and began feeling anxious about our upcoming trip with them. This will be my first vacation with the in-laws and they seemed to have every last detail planned out in cookie cutter fashion.

Cookies-that's how it was! Like following a recipe. When I cook, I rarely follow a recipe strictly. I like to be able to tweak things or go in a different direction than I first thought I would. I like that kind of freedom and spontaneity.  So it is with travel plans-I like a little flexibility.

Don't get me wrong, I do like having a general plan (like booking a hotel room), but the details are better left to circumstance, in my opinion. Like when I took my girls to FL and let them choose which places to go to and when-we saw things I never knew existed when I lived there. Or the last minute re-routing we took on our way to my brother-in-law's wedding. Had we stuck with the "recipe" I can guarantee my husband would have been late for the rehearsal. Besides, hadn't my in-laws ever seen the National Lampoons Vacation movies?  Hadn't they learned anything from Clark Griswold about the pitfalls of too much planning?  The lesson I took away from these movies was that the more intricate your plan, the more bound it was to fail.

And what in life really follows our plans that precisely anyway?  Isn't it better to stay open to the possibility of re-routing or taking the scenic way or detouring or doing something else a little different?  There's almost always more than one way to get somewhere.  The coolest highway I found in FL is a little two-lane road through the sparsely-populated wilderness between the Atlantic coast and the Kissimmee area.  It has a speed limit of 55 mph and there are never any cars on it.  Plus, it's FREE.  You can totally  avoid the tolls and enjoy the quiet serenity of this region and get there almost just as fast as you could have on the major highways.  But if you go to google maps, and ask for directions, you won't see this pop up as an option.   Like Robert Frost, I prefer this less-traveled-by road.

So thank you to my in-laws for their good intentions in providing us fool-proof directions, but I like playing the fool sometimes--throwing caution to the wind, leaving doors open, and trusting my instincts and sense of direction.  We'll see you at the beach, but I can't say yet how we'll be getting there :)

Last Name Confusion

What follows is a clarification of the various last names of me and my children through the years. This has clearly been a source of some confusion for friends and loved ones, so I hope this sheds light on the matter, and also for anyone else interested, perhaps this post will serve to show some of the thought processes that go into decisions regarding last names.

I learned from a fairly young age to be defensive of my last name. This is because I was asked on more than one occasion before high school to change my last name. The first occasion was some time after my parents divorced, when my mom asked how I'd feel about changing my last name to her maiden name. The situation at the time was that my mother had primary custody of my sister and me, but we visited my father on weekends... Our visitations at that point were somewhat sporadic but I looked forward to them. We'd often stay the night and we were finding that these times were cherished and important in maintaining our relationship with our father. I felt very put in the middle by my mom's question. I did not feel I had enough time with my dad as it was, and I felt that if I abandoned his last name, it would distance us even farther. But on the other hand, I knew the divorce had been painful for my mother and that she'd really like to rid herself of this constant reminder of my father in her life. I also liked my mom's maiden name--it is a unique Irish name that stands apart from the rather common and bland last name of my father. If I'd have been given my mom's maiden name as part of my name at birth I would have embraced it. But I couldn't choose it over my father's last name years later. It just didn't feel right, because by now, my name had become a part of who I was.

Later when my mom remarried, my new stepfather asked about "adopting" me and having me take his last name. This was never an option in my mind. I already resented what I perceived as my stepfather trying to replace my father and my stepfather and I did not see eye to eye, nor did I celebrate my mother and stepfather's union. In fact, in my tween rebellion, I was at first refusing to even be a part of the wedding until my aunt sat down and explained how it would only hurt my mom. I eventually accepted that, while I did not understand her reasons, this was the man she'd chosen, so I would support her in this decision. However, it would be many years until my stepfather and I were civil to each other. Indeed, it wasn't really until adulthood that I would say we could predictably get along decently, and most of that had to do with his inability to control me any longer rather than a true reconciliation. Needless to say, taking his name was not something I would ever have considered seriously, but it did reinforce my name as my identity. This was the one piece of me that could not be taken by anyone, even though in my home life I otherwise felt like a prisoner to circumstances beyond my control.

So when my college sweetheart proposed to me, I automatically assumed I would keep my name. We had discussions about it and, though I think he was disappointed, he respected my decision. Of course we also discussed how we would handle naming of any children we were to have together. This was a little bit harder to decide upon. But I felt strongly that I wanted my name passed down in some way. My father had only one brother who had only one son, and that branch of the family was all but estranged from the rest of us. There was really no one to carry on my father's name. And besides that, I felt that if I was going to carry a baby for 9 months and go through the hard work of birthing that baby, I at least ought to be able to give it my name in some way. Still, I didn't want my name chosen over my husband's, as I felt we would be equal partners in parenting, and we were certainly equal partners biologically speaking, in the child's DNA. So it was difficult to come up with a fair way to handle the naming of our children. When we were expecting our first child, we finally decided on a hyphenated last name, for lack of better options. We chose my name to be the first in the hyphenated name, simply because it sounded better that way than with his name first.

We went round and round about what that child would do when that child had children, but that just made our heads spin. I came up with a theoretical system whereby last names could be passed down "fairly" even among those with hyphenated names: the oldest would pass down the part of the name that came from the older parent, then the second-born would pass down the younger parent's name, and it would continue to alternate that way, according to birth order. We resolved to explain to our child some day how this theoretical system could work, but make clear that how she ultimately handled naming her children would be completely up to her.

Thus my daughters have the last name: Myname-Hisname. That is their last name. The hyphen joins them together as one name. ie. you can't have one without the other--it would be just as incorrect to call them Firstname Myname as it would be to call them Firstname Hisname. Still, I quickly learned that this world is still ill-equipped for this concept. People get confused all the time. Computerized systems don't always allow a hyphen as a possible character. Schools, doctors, relatives, etc. sometimes call them only by Myname or by Hisname. Personally, I don't find this hyphenated concept to be that confusing. We use hyphenated words all the time in the English language, just as I have a few sentences ago. "ill-equipped" is neither "ill" nor "equipped." Those individual words have very different meanings from what "ill-equipped" means. But we generally have no problem recognizing that "ill-equipped" is one hyphenated unique word. My daughters' last names are no different.

Ok, well so far this isn't too confusing. As of the early part of this century, we had a family: the father went by Hisname, I went by Myname, and the kids went by Myname-Hisname. Frankly at that point, what was more confusing was probably that my then-husband also used his middle name as how he wanted people to address him, rather than his first name. Of course this was all going to get more muddled, as this family was destined not to stay intact.

My husband and I divorced and agreed on shared custody of the children. I selfishly would have preferred primary custody, but knowing how much I missed my father growing up, I didn't want to put my girls through that. I knew my girls had a good father, and if he wanted to be involved in their lives, I thought it was important for their sake, to continue our approach of being equal partners in parenting. The divorce was the easy part--no need to change any names. But a few years later we each remarried with the weddings taking place within a year of each other. First my ex's new spouse took his last name. This was a no-brainer for her as she was eager to ditch her ex-husband's last name. Then came my wedding. By this time, you'd think I would make the same decisions as I had in the past, but I didn't think it was fair to assume the same choices should apply to my current partner that applied to a previous partner.  This was a new partner and a new marriage and I was not even the same person I'd been when I got married the first time.  Thus I thought it made sense to at least re-examine the last name question.

Professionally, I had already been published under my maiden name as an author on a scientific journal article.  That lent for a strong argument for keeping my maiden name.  On the other hand, my soon-to-be father-in-law had only sisters (no brothers), and my fiance had one brother who was in a serious relationship but not yet married and so my in-laws did not have anyone yet to carry on their name (similar to my situation before my first marriage).  We knew we were expecting a child when we got engaged, and I had already had the opportunity to pass my name down with my first two children, so this made a strong argument for taking my husband's name.  Then again, would it be confusing to my girls' school, friends, etc. if their mother's last name did not appear at all in their hyphenated last name?

It was hard to know what to do.  But finally I came back to my original reasoning for having kept my name in the first place--my identity.  I asked myself to reflect on my name and my identity, and what I concluded was that I didn't really have one singular identity anymore, but more of a multi-faceted identity.  Over the years I had gradually taken on many different roles and identified with different aspects of what made me me. I wore different hats at different times.  Sometimes I wore the "mom" hat.  Sometimes I wore the "astrophysicist" hat.  Sometimes I wore the "soon-to-be-wife" hat, or the "pregnant woman" hat, or the "daughter" hat, or the "aunt" hat, and I'd worn other hats over the years in the past, too:  the "nursing mom" hat, the "teacher" hat, the "student" hat...  I concluded that I wanted the kind of flexibility in my name to put on different hats as I assumed different roles.  I wanted to be able to go by my maiden name, or my husband's name (ie. a married name), or a combination of the two.  So what I ended up doing was tacking on my husband's name to my name, with a space in between.  ie.  I became Firstname Myname Hisname2 (note that the "2" is used in this example to distinguish this as my second husband's name).

The space in between is important and different from a hyphen.  It means there are two names, not one name joined by hyphenation.  This means that either name or both are equally valid, sort of like you might use a string of adjectives to describe something.  If you called me "that smart, friendly lady,"  it would be equally right to say that I was "smart" or that I was "friendly."  Maybe in some context the "smart" would be more important, say if you were discussing my student achievement, and in another context the "friendly" might be more important, like if you were talking about my qualities as your friend.

So using both names with a space in between gave me the freedom I was looking for.  Professionally I could just go by Firstname Myname as I always had.  Taking on the wifely role, I could be Mrs. Hisname2.  To avoid confusion with my daughters' affairs I could go by Myname Hisname2, which would make it obvious that we share some name derivative, but also introduce the idea that Mr. Hisname2 was their stepfather.

When our son was born, I felt that I'd still like a piece of my last name passed on in some way.  But I didn't feel as strongly that it needed to be a part of his last name, since I already had two children with my name as part of their last name, whereas my husband had none.  So we chose instead to give our son two middle names, one of which was my maiden name.  This way, if he choses to, he can still pass it on in some way (perhaps as part of his children's middle name), and yet it keeps things simple enough, too, because the three of us can still be "The Hisname2's" to my son's future school, friends, etc., and my in-laws know their name will be passed on.  Of course, it turned out that my brother-in-law got married the very next year after my husband and I did, and I have a sneaking suspicion that my son will not be the only one to pass down the name :).  But at least we got things started...

Ultimately, there's no easy solution to the last name dilemma. Some women never had a relationship with their fathers or had a poor relationship with their fathers and see no need to carry on the name they were given at birth.  Sometimes you see couples that come up with a new last name for them both to assume, and sometimes there are husbands who take their wives' last names.  I support all these choices and others.  I think the important thing is to do what feels right to your family, even if that's simply doing the traditional thing of the wife taking the husband's last name and passing it onto their children.  In fact I believe there's absolutely nothing wrong with a woman taking her husband's last name, but I do think there's something wrong if she feels she had to do so despite her wishes or if the husband just expects it as his right regardless of his wife's feelings on the matter.  No one should bully anyone into last name decisions, and when decisions have been given thought and made carefully and freely, they should be respected.  I don't expect everyone to choose the same way I have, nor do I expect everyone to never be confused, but I hope that, at the very least, everyone can understand the reasons that went behind my decisions with regard to my last name and my children's last names.  Indeed that is my wish for all families' naming decisions--that others empathize with their reasoning, even if they would choose differently, since these choices are rarely simple.  And my wish for all women is that they enter decisions on their last name and their children's last names freely and with an open mind.