In Kindergarten we learn to draw and write our alphabet. Finger paint a grey blob on a piece of paper that has three or four stout stanchions supporting it and teacher comes over and exclaims how wonderful an elephant we made. Really it was a cat, but teacher knows best, she’s smart, it is now an elephant. “How will other people know it is mine?” she asks. I flip it over and draw out the letters of my name:
M… mine
I…C… I can see it is mine, now you can too
H…A… It is hella good
E…L… I lay claim to it, it is mine, I did this
My name is larger than the original drawing. Now everyone who has the opportunity to flip the greasy grey blob that vaguely resembles something teacher says is an elephant will see that this is venerably mine.
Progressing from crude finger paints to the starter utensils that could practically be doubled as carpenter pencils to the ever popular #2 pencils and finally to pens that simultaneously never seem to run out of ink and are always running out of ink. The one way we always lay claim to our work is to scratch, no, etch our names to it. “Pop quiz”, amid groans of displeasure the history teacher says, “name at the top, date, period, and …. lets begin. Question 1, who started the skirmish at Browne’s Ferry?” Emblazoned with each adult choice I now make I have to sign my name, sometimes seemingly in triplicate on a single page, just to prove I really am who I say I am and I am willing to do what it says on the paper.
So, how do I lay claim to what is my life? Life, it is intangible, it’s byways and byproducts, but how do I lay claim to it? Sure, the government has my signature on dozens of papers saying this is my house, or this is my debt, or this is my stuff. How do I claim other things? Do I even need to claim them? My wife, who is that only by both of us signing a governmental paper stating we are going to be married, has a ring on her finger. Over the years we have replaced our rings due to sizing, age, and warping of the originals. Kind of funny, and something we were not thinking about at the time, when you get married as ‘children’ your hands still grow into adult hands thereby requiring ring resizing. What, other than the signed birth certificate, claims the children we made together as mine, or ours now that we are married. Sure they look like me, but they also look like Kristin, and they also look like a number of the other 6 billion people on the planet.
After so many years with Kristin, parts of my personality have worn off on her; and her me. We are not the same people we were when we first started dating, when we first got married, when we entered our first house, when we had our first child. That is the beauty of it, we have grown together forming new identities with each other, in each other. The children come into the scene and they mimic us, draw from us their own personalities, splintered factions of ourselves fastened together to make a whole. Watching them grow into little people has, at once, been fascinating and frightening. Fascinating because I can see myself in them and can remember how fun it was discovering things. Frightening because I know some pitfalls they will inevitably discover, fall down, get hurt by.
Kristin and I also drape our house with ‘ourselves’. Movie posters and paintings, books and games and movies; evidence of who we are and what we enjoy. Sci-fi and fantasy novels litter my shelves while romance and classics cover hers. The children randomly take some of our books to read for themselves; Nathan more so than the Kathryn or Emma at this point, but they have shown some interest. Some family board games we can play with guests, a deck of cards or two we can play solitarily or with partners, or computer or console games we can sink ourselves into with little regard for the outside world. Burgeoning stacks of movies littler the stand the TV sits on while row upon row of movie line the shelves. Some family oriented, others that are children only (mainly because mom and dad are tired of watching them over and over… and over) and some that children probably should not watch yet. Paintings and photographs we find comfort in, or find identity in, or we find inexplicably intriguing are hung or lean against the walls, with a handful more in a closet or two waiting for their turn in the rotation. We have burrowed out of this lump of sticks and clay what means most to us to declare for all to see who we are and what we do and how we feel.
So how do I lay claim to my life, how do I show the world the little flourish that is me? My family and my environment.
