My Story

We all have a place where our story began. For me, my story begins before my birth.

I was not my parents' first pregnancy, but I would be my parents' first child.

It was the 1970s. Ultrasounds were new, and only used for those who truly needed to have an inside look for medical reasons. My mom was a nurse, and the clinic she worked for had received an ultrasound machine but had yet to use it. The doctor had been trained but the clinic didn't have a patient who had been deemed to have the "procedure." My mom was pregnant with me, why not give it a try. There were so many concerns around what ultrasounds did, so it took some convincing. In addition to it being unknown, the technology was new and unrefined. Training wasn't just to use the machine, it was also to decipher the image. While they saw me that day, there was no determining if I was male or female.

My 1970's "hip" parents bought a baby name book. The same book I used when looking at names for my own children. Inside the front and back cover my parents wrote down names they liked. Most are written in my mother's fine handwriting, but my father's block letters appear in those lists, too. Without looking I can still see the name ADDISON written in the boy name list. Once lists were made, they each began to call by a name. My father choosing a boy name, my mother a girl name. My father's chosen name didn't stand a chance apparently.

In my memory of the tale he called me Seamus; however, the reality of this memory could be shadowed by the memory of him talking about thinking of having a son named Seamus, or that his only male dog was ultimately named Seamus. The name was on the list. My mother's chosen name lost out as well. She called me Emily from somewhere around the seventh month of her pregnancy. I do not know this Emily's middle name. But I do know that Emily did not look like an Emily. My mom told me she cried when she realized she couldn't call me Emily. Apparently my pointy ears, red face, and birth wrinkles made it too apparent I was Irish. My mom said I looked like a leprechaun. As long as I am not the evil orange one of movie fame, I can handle being connected to the Irish ore of my father's heritage. My mom named me Erin, why not. She essentially picked the name because it meant Ireland, the land of my birth leprechaun looks.

My middle name comes with a story, too. Although the story itself is built from a misunderstood story. My middle name is supposedly after my Papa's favorite sister. However, my mom misunderstood the story, and instead I was named after the sister who married my Papa's best friend. Sarah might be a bit of an odd combination with my first name, so maybe the misunderstanding worked in my favor.

Names are truly important. They are our building blocks. They are often our first introduction to experiences with others. They are the piece of you that people inquire about, provide us a "tag" that is our own, and not just a list of things we like. Sometimes people change their names to shed themselves of their past. Or we use nicknames as a better identification of who we are. Or even change our names to better represent who we are. And even these have stories to go with them, stories that tell of who we are and an experience we had.