Call Me Yazzybel

Recently, I wrote a question on Facebook: If you go to church and nobody says your name, were you really there?

I got a few answers but none of them answered the question for me.

My friend Pat wrote --or told me--that that question would never occur to her. That it had never happened to her. That's what made me really think about it now. Why is it so important to me that people say my name? 

My dad really wanted a son to carry his name.  I was the first child, and my destined name was his. When I turned out to be a girl, my parents seem to me to have been devoid of ideas or imagination, so I was named for my mother. A perfect copy of her Christian name, her maiden name, and her married name. Not even a middle name of my own. This sometimes caused problems in clerical situations as I grew up. Like when I applied in Texas for a copy of my teacher's certificate (credential in California) , I got my mother's.

When I was a kid, I was seldom Linda. Linda was my mother.

My mother was an extremely beautiful, outspoken and intense woman. She lived a Texas life of the woman of the early 20th Century, but she could have been anything. She had the great Celtic gift of speech and storytelling, and we daughters used to marvel at her way of recounting the common gossip of our city: "At two o' clock in the morning, her husband turned to her and said. ---, and she told him, ---," whatever, but detailed as if she'd been there listening to the whole thing. It made us laugh.

She was Linda, and I was Little Linda. Shy, wheezy, intelligent, not to be counted on much. Same as now!  Anyway, if they called me anything they called me Little Linda or Little Lindy.

My own husband addressed me by name only twice in our marriage, once early on, and once late in our married life did he say, "Linda, ----,"  Why did I notice this? It seemed to mean something to me.

When I was in my forties, I asked my mother why she couldn't have chosen another name for me. She was surprised that I even had the thought, and couldn't think of a reason. Could she have thought of a name?  "You could have named me Ysabel, after Daddy's mother, " I said. Well, that made her mad, and she started writing Ysabel  on the letters she addressed to me ( we wrote back then, with paper, and pen and stamps!!!) and one came to me in North Carolina when I was visiting my sister Christine and my brother in law, reading Ysabel, said to my sister, "WHO is this Yazzabel?"  It made us all laugh and then my Texas-y sister changed it to Yazzybel, and that's who I have been since then.  I have noticed that more people are willing to address me by that name for some reason. Maybe it's really me.

So call me Yazzybel or Yazzy if you like, ...but call me, as they saying goes. I dont know why it means anything to me but it seems to. If this has been TMI, you are welcome not to pursue the subject with me further, but also welcome to come along for the ride if you wish!