I am in the Glenwood Mall and I have gotten here very early. No, it is not for a super sale at JC Penney, it’s to wait in line behind 40 people to see the squatty dark-haired woman with her bifocals behind the desk at the DMV and to ask her kindly to change GG to GM. Please, and thank you.
I have grown up with this name, Gina Michele Guarascio, so that is who I am. And now, after a ceremony in the park, I am no longer GG - as I am referred to by many - but GM. Gina Murdock, wife of Mr. Jerry Murdock.
"Hello, it’s Gina Murdock, nice to meet you." Hmm, sounds funny.
"Welcome, Mrs. Murdock," they have said ever since I started dating Jerry and he took me to these wonderfully fancy hotels and on all of his business trips. So, it’s not like I haven’t been getting used to it for a year, but then I had to wait, until he actually “popped the question” and I could decide with a simple “yes” or “no” on that stunning white beach on Necker Island if I really wanted to be Mrs. Murdock or not. Before that day late last year I just toyed with the idea, played with it, dreamed of it, actually.
I remember liking the feeling of it.
So now I am Mrs. Murdock. I think of my mom who was a "so and so" before she became a Guarascio and I wonder how long it took her to get used to it. To me, she was always a Guarascio until I got old enough to know she was actually someone before she married my dad and simply became “mom”.
To me, these days, as I stutter with my new name and have to think through how I say it and how to write it, I can’t imagine ever forgetting this Gina Guarascio, the one before Mr. Murdock and the rest of my life.
If we have kids they will only know me as Gina Michele Murdock and they will only hear about GG and not really know about this girl who was such a student of life and always wondering and kissing people and playing and dressing up. But, what is it to live in the past with these memories of something I’m not. Something that was once human and is now only a story (RIP GG.)
It was a choice, surely, to go to the Social Security office and wait in line to tell them I am no longer me, and to go to the DMV and sit in that cushioned seat warmed by someone else’s butt before me for two hours as I waited for the machine-like people to say #110. It was my choice to send off dozens of letters to all the agencies that pretend to care in very official language saying, “I am no longer that person you knew.” That girl is gone.
I am starting to get over this compulsive urge to explain, to anyone I meet, “I just became a Murdock, really I am a Guarascio. I have been for 33 years.” I realize, no one cares and it’s just a name and I have the same fingerprints and official statements about height and weight on the identification cards, but it just doesn’t look right, that GM, does it?
There are the holdouts too, the ones who write, “I’m still going to call you GG, OK?” and I say, “of course,” like these must be my “real” friends, the only ones who loved the sound of two G’s so much that they won’t let it go, won’t let me go. But, I do feel it is time to go, a little bit. Marriage is about a whole lot more than a name change. It is the melding of traditions, less time with girlfriends and family and even pets, all that all goes to the back of the line, behind that new thing called Mr. Murdock.
It's the new thing that is the most important thing.
I said it out loud and in front of 150 people and because of that, because of those moments infused with ceremony and importance, I am more Murdock now than than Guarascio even after only 30 days. I committed myself to this person and I decided to have faith in him beyond all others, except myself, of course. One must always have faith, and love, for self before others, but the rest of it is the tangle of threads and veins and cartilage and emotions and dancing and striving that makes up a relationship, and no guru’s going to tell you two - the Guarascio/Murdock combination plate special – how to do it.
There is only faith and love and Murdock, from now on.
I lived as GG for 33 years.
And. So. But.
I lived in California for 17 years and now Colorado for 16 years, and even though California’s got one year on me here, I am more Colorado than California (like totally for sure dudes.) I felt that way pretty much the first time I set foot in this state and smelled the freshness and marveled at the blue of the sky and the green of the grass and heard the people who I didn't even know say “hello” and every once in a while, “howdy.” It was a feeling of knowing I was in the right place. And what a crazy and mysterious way I got to this state, I picked a place that I had never heard of to go and live and learn for four years and that turned into 16 years and will most likely turn into forever. But, I knew, and when you know you know.
I think I can say it with a bit more clarity now,
“I am Gina Michele Murdock, good to meet you.”
Because when you know, you know.
