A Very Special Christmas for...Catherine???

I was almost born Catherine. My mother very nearly named me Catherine. I’m sure that in the past I have questioned her reasoning for almost pinning me with this clumsy social death sentence, but her reasoning escapes me at the moment. Catherine is the type of name that belongs to the type of girl that wears turtle necks all year long, is allergic to dust and wears socks with sandals or Crocs. If you can’t tell by my others writings by now, I cannot stand wearing socks with sandals or the people who do so. I want to roll up a newspaper and slap them on the nose with it. The only time this is acceptable is if you have hideous feet – by all means, cover them shits up! I would prefer you wore actual shoes, but I don’t make the rules; as much as I would like to. Catherine though, she would wear this all ensemble all year long. Sneezing and wheezing from behind the latest edition of Scientific American or sobbing through pages of Sylvia Plath. Catherine is lonely. She dines on Easy Cheese and Ritz crackers. She’s so lonely she’s in the market for a pet, but hairless pets are hard to come by and for some fucked up reason they are crazy expensive! Allergies.

There’s is nothing terribly unique about my name. If you were to ask someone named Catherine, they’d probably have a list just as crappy as the one I’ve provided of “Christina characteristics.” I’ve grown quite attached to my name in the 37 years that I’ve been tethered to it. That wasn’t always the case though. As a teenager I tried all sorts of variations of my name and a myriad of spellings as well. When that didn’t work and I didn’t feel special enough, I started creating new personas. I created new personas, not new personalities. I am not Sybil and do not have 50 different personalities that I need to keep at bay. I am just being clear: I just created nicknames for myself. I liked to be called “Rayne” for a while. I watched The Crow one too many times. “Can’t rain all the time.” Terminally unique – that was me; or so I would’ve liked to think. Starbucks may think that they have invented the wheel by misspelling your name on your cup therefore making you feel special. Nope. I’ve been doing this shit since 1993.

Growing up we had a Christmas tree in our home every year. Every year we would haul boxes down from the attic one by one until our arms felt like they would fall off. Correction: I would haul down these boxes of ornaments and assorted Christmas crap. I was ecstatic! I lived for this holiday nonsense. My mother would stand in the living room and direct traffic and bark orders about where to put stuff. Dad kind of wandered around looking for a good way to remain busy, stay in her good graces, and still not have to do too much work; he’d be assembling my bike later and wrapping my gifts after all. Ah, Christmas dysfunction – I miss it so much. We’d all pretend to not hate each other for approximately 3 hours on Christmas day spending time with extended family, so everyone needed to get good and buzzed tonight. I just needed to listen to the same Christmas album over and over until my ears bled and hang ornaments meticulously until my eyes could no longer stand the lights, tinsel, and late hours of the evening.

One of my favorite ornaments was this little gold angel with my name and birth date engraved on it. Well…not my name. It had my would-be name on it. WTF?! I always hung the angel next to my Rainbow Brite ornament in the same place on the tree every year because I'm fucking OCD. What's really important though is just how close to becoming a librarian was I? Was I in the birth canal and my mother was like “On second thought, I really want her to have friends growing up so that she’s not pestering me with all her bullshit ideas and dreams all the time. I’ll call her Christina instead.” Maybe she waited until after I was born and they were piercing my ears (which happens immediately exiting the birth canal for Mexican girls) and when I didn’t cry and flipped the doctor off instead, she realized I was tough and not a Catherine at all. I never thought to ask why my mother changed her mind. I’m glad she did. There aren’t any really cool songs about Catherine. There are songs about Tina, Christine (16) etc. and that’s what’s really important – the song value. I’m shallow like that. I would stare at the ornament every year and wonder what Catherine would be doing at that very moment. Childhood Tina imagined that she would be out on some incredible adventure. Adult Tina knows that she would be sitting in front of the humidifier with Vicks Vape-O-Rub watching Agatha Christie or Criminal Minds. This is where I tell you that I’m not truly mean or crazy, just a little unbalanced.

So what’s in a name? It changes for me. Daily. Emotions rise and fall, ebb and flow. All four seasons in one day sometimes. I spent the better part of my childhood pretending to be someone else; praying for a different life even. I wanted so desperately to have courage that I was sure I didn’t have. I wanted to be the heroine in the novel I was reading. Now, I am back to writing. Perhaps I can write myself into my own heroine. I am not a Catherine. Some days, I am not sure that Christina or Tina or any other name fits the mood I am in either, and that’s OK too. I do not limit my experiences today to a name or a set idea behind a name. A friend of mine told me the other day that he was concerned for me because I seemed “dark.” I have always been dark. I dance in and out of the light. What is constant is the laughter.

*I am deeply sorry to all the Catherines' out there; I mean no harm. All in good fun, just poor taste*