musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

The respect that makes calamity of so long life


Now that I am old -or indeed because I am old- it sometimes strikes me that there are many important personal questions yet to be answered -even to be asked, for that matter. I suppose some might think it strange that I’ve already wasted so many years placing other lesser queries at the front of the line, but perhaps that is what youth is for: begin with the least important of the bunch and work your way forwards from there. Of course, by the time I began to wade through my 80ies, it occurred to me that Time and my still-functioning neurons were running out; it was only an existential problem that remained: me.

So, before I lose track of the matter currently uppermost in my mind, let me attempt to succinctly identify the issue of my middle-of-the-night wakefulness: who am I -my first name or my last? I had already solved the other issue: what remnants of dinner still awaited me in the fridge after a brief but cold trip to the kitchen with a flashlight. Only the names remained unexplained…

I suppose it must seem strange to those of you not yet clinging to the remnants of your identities, that this could even be a question. The precarity at the end of the ladder is real, though; you did not assign your name and you do not own it any more than it owns you.

Names are confusing at the best of times. In the medieval era, surnames were often assigned on the basis of occupation; in Roman times, possibly inspired by the Etruscan culture, people had two, three, or four names to indicate lineage and social standing. Early Romans had a praenomen (a given name) and a nomen (a hereditary name based on a family, or gens, with a common ancestor). Later on, they adopted cognomen (original surnames). Some earned an exclusive fourth name, an agnomen (like a nickname), based on accomplishments.[i] Okay, I’m still puzzled…

I’m not certain whether my surname is a nomen or a cognomen -all of these nomen terms confuse me- but I rather doubt that it was based on my father’s social standing -he was an accountant, for goodness sakes. But, setting that embarrassing historical gem aside for a moment, for the first 5 or 10 years of my recollectable life, I was known as Gaa around the house -don’t ask… At any rate, for literary as well as professional appearances, I eventually shortened it to G (an improvement, don’t you think?).

While I admit that a letter like G, whether capitalized or not, doesn’t have the same poetry attached to it that, say, a Gatlin, a Gliam, or even a Giardia possesses, but there you have it, eh? My parents read a lot, and I’m sure the many Reader’s Digests that populated our bathroom could have supplied a more useful fund of names as they were awaiting my birth.

Still, an agnomen like G -spelled like it sounds- served me well until I was forced to use one of my middle names like James, or Edward on official documents. I suppose I could have reverted to the praenomen Gary which was printed on my birth certificate, but I dislike the name for some reason. Even my attempts to disguise it with two Rs or a penultimate E, failed to divorce me sufficiently from the nakedly unadornable Gary that had been draped on me like a rag. Simplifying Gaa to G should have been seen as inevitable when even my father, perhaps because of his Baptist upbringing, could neither bring himself to swear, nor utter the name Gary. My mother, however, was High Anglican -or whatever they called her denomination in England- and avoided domestic turbulence by simply referring to me as dear.

So, who am I? No, really. I mean are we our names? Some have suggested that names are much like clothes -identifiers that can be used for recognition if the face or hair fails to help whoever needs to know the person they are addressing. But it therefore occurs to me to wonder whether, because of my chosen agnomen, I should carry extra ID or simply depend for my identity on my clothes. In that case, would it be my shirt, or my pants which identify me? Do I wear my G like a hat…?

Anyway, all this name stuff is beginning to worry me, as you have no doubt already guessed. There comes a time in one’s life when it is important to make a stand. As trivial as names may seem to most people, I feel as if I have been living in a lie for much of my life. It’s not as if I don’t know who I am under the names in which I am dressed; it’s more that others might mistake the clothes I have chosen for those of Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor…

After all these years of relative incognitability, who have I become? Is it merely Fashion that has constrained me, or Whim? At 3 A.M. and a full stomach after snuzzling down the left-over pizza in the fridge, am I finally ready to meet my Maker as a G? Stripped down to underpants and slippers, should I acknowledge my nominal Fate before indigestion takes its mortal toll?

It’s amazing what thoughts percolate through an aging, just awakened nocturnal brain. But it strikes me that under those refrigerator-lit circumstances, I gained a fresh understanding of Andersen’s Emperor. My G is all I have been dressing myself in ever since I retired. I thought it was enough, but perhaps… perhaps the little granddaughter of a lady in the local store the other day was on to something.

I introduced myself to her and smiled.

“G isn’t a proper name,” she said, giggling after examining me rather curiously when I told her my name. “How do you spell it, anyway?” She looked up at her smiling grandmother as if she could help.

“Well, I only sort of wear the name G, I suppose.. ” I said after a moment’s reflection. It wasn’t the usual question, and I suppose it caught me off guard. “You spell it just like the G in the alphabet,” I clarified.

“You can’t spell a letter, silly…” she said, smiling and shrugging as if she’d taught me something important. “You can only say it…”

Out of the mouth of babes, eh?

[i] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/where-did-our-names-come-from-the-origins-may-surprise-you

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gozzter

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