The RK Sushi Experi-ment/ence

When I heard that Rice Krispie sushi could be a thing, or was a thing, I thought of the delight in my grandkids’ eyes when they would

see it. Just three ingredients—Fruit Roll-Up, Rice Krispie cake mixture, and a gummy worm centre. This idea is not original—let’s dispel any rumours of creativity—but I can’t remember where I first saw it or who might have mentioned the possibility. I checked online for tips on the process. Okay, not exhaustively. Still, the results weren’t encouraging—the closest anyone came to my vision was a Rice Krispie cake rolled around gummy worms that stretched along one edge, like a jelly roll, then cut in bite-sized sushi pieces, only then to be wrapped in a length of Fruit By The Foot.

 Not good enough. I wanted an authentic roll-up experience, with the Fruit Roll-Up integrated into the “sushi” roll. With no process to follow, I decided to trust my ideas, and to rely on the accumulated wisdom of more than forty years of experience with food. I wasn’t discounting, either, the knowledge gleaned from Food Network. With Rice Krispies languishing on the counter in the downstairs kitchen, marshmallows leftover from summer camping propped beside them, the reminders were omnipresent, if not all the raw materials. 

It seems audacious to say that the planets aligned for Rice Krispie sushi-roll making. Given the pandemic and the political chaos south of the border, the metaphor seems too grand. Let’s say instead that the tumblers fell together at the grocery story (logical) in the transformed bulk bin aisle (unexpected). As I searched for almonds, bags of gummy worms beckoned at eye level. Well. It was a sign. Next, the Fruit Roll-Ups. They still do exist, both in sheets and by the foot. I wasn’t sure, so much time having elapsed since I used to buy the strips to teach simple, compound, and complex sentences to middle years students. Time to head to the til. 

The biggest, challenge, I imagined, was keeping the Rice Krispie batter malleable enough to spread on a sheet of fruit roll-up. What about working on my warming tray covered with parchment paper? 

I would also keep the equipment and materials at the ready: a flat spatula, a cake server, a spoon, and a knife in a tall glass of water; the gummy worms; and the sushi rolls still in the wrapper with the top snipped. Further down that kitchen counter, parchment paper on a cookie sheet would act as the receiving blanket for the newborn sushi rolls. With everything in place, I prepared the Rice Krispie cake and prepared to work as quickly as I could. 

With the Rice Krispie mixture on the stove in stasis on low, I began. Warming tray set on low too, I unwrapped a sheet of Fruit Roll-Up on the parchment paper. As I began to spread some Rice Krispie mixture on top, the Fruit Roll-up sheet disintegrated in the heat. Warming tray maybe not such a good idea. The flopped roll was good, though. Gummy worms are one of my guilty pleasures.

 Round 2. This time, I spread the fruit roll-up sheet directly on the parchment. I spread the Rice Krispie mixture on top with a wet spoon to prevent sticking, and flattened it with the wet cake server. When the sheet was mostly covered, I stretched out a gummy worm (one gummy worm, stretched a little, was perfect), and began to roll with the parchment as leverage. The result: a reasonable looking sushi roll. Still using the parchment paper, I massaged the sushi roll, and molded it to a more streamlined shape. It took its place on the incubator.

Round 3. I was on a roll now. Same procedure, but this time, I used the cake server to flatten the cake mixture as much as I could, much like one would pound a chicken breast or pork cutlet to make schnitzel. Rolling up was much easier this time, and the appearance of the final product had improved dramatically.

My takeaways from this process: 

Fun project! 

Parchment paper is the secret weapon. Nothing sticks. 

I didn’t have to work quite as fast as I had first thought. The Rice Krispie mixture did stay soft in the pan. There was some caramelization, though, of the marshmallow as a result of the prolonged heat, even on low. The cake I made with the leftover mixture had a much deeper flavor than usual. Next time, I might try a hot water bath. The sushi rolls are extremely sweet. One bite goes a very long way. Delicious, though, and soft enough to chew easily. 

I made only five rolls, counting one failed attempt. Two I sliced for the taste test and photo. Two are in the freezer. In the end, the experiment resulted in a delightful experience. Interesting, isn’t it, that both these words, experiment and experience, originate in the same Latin root: "they both come from the word experior, which means, to gain knowledge through repeated trials." To gain knowledge from trying over and over again. In fact, the French word for experiment is indeed expérience! So, in every sense of the word, my experiment did indeed culminate in a satisfying and delicious experience!

 For more information on the etymology of experience and experiment, see Kyle Kowalski and a podcast by Dr. Andrew Weil.

Channeling Maman

Maman and I circa 1985

 My sister and I sit on opposite sides of a long white collapsible table, scissors in hand, swatches of felt in vivid red, navy blue, peacock blue, dark and light greens, and white to our left, patterns, pins, rulers to our right. As we cut the pieces that will later coalesce into figures for three Advent calendars, we chat.  In our adulthood, our collaborations have been limited to celebrations for our parents.  Here we are, though, a retirement-enabled pair enshrining the Christmas story in fabric for our children and grandchildren.  This is my sister’s second go-round.  I am the beneficiary of her careful replication in triplicate last year of her own Advent calendar purchased at a craft show decades before. So here I am, a grateful recipient of an invitation not only to join her in another crafting session this fall, but also to piggy back on her patterns and experience.  Two of the calendars will be mine.

Pieces awaiting assembly

As we cut, count, sort and glue, we swap memories.   Maman creating wedding decorations, knitting Christmas stockings, drawing posters for the church bazaar, making quilts for her grandchildren, or fashioning a Japanese geisha wig from wool, Christmas garland and a ball from roll-on deodorant. Maman, the incomparable seamstress, at her machine.   Watching her, amazed, miter corners, insert sleeves without even a hint of a gathe
r, or make perfect bound buttonholes. Listening to her explain the process as she worked, and share childhood stories and snippets of her own life as a career woman in the forties.  Asking questions, 

prompting her for more, 

filing away the lore and the wisdom.

Angel pieces

 

All the while, I channel my mother so intensely,  I sense she’s sitting beside me.

I’ve channeled Maman often since she left us, eleven years on November 19, at the age of 92.    She reminds me that my crêpes stick because my pan isn’t hot enough. She nudges me to use the “good” dishes, with the bread and butter plates, even if it’s just my husband and me for Sunday dinner.  Oh, and to remember that the knife blades turn inward, toward the plate. I hear her pull from her vast collection of aphorisms:  « Dis-moi qui tu fréquentes, et je te dirai qui tu es » (If I know who your friends are, I know who you are.); “What’s worth doing is worth doing well”; « Quand on crache en l’air, ça nous retombe sur le nez » (Anything you spit up in the air will land on your own nose.).  I catch myself saying to my grandchildren when they visit, “Thank you for coming to see Mémère,” just as she used to say to our children.  

 

Gluing process

I recall her meticulous attention to detail as my sister and I work on
the Advent calendars.  I haven’t sewn since I made my daughter’s dance costumes, seven of them, in 2002. The hems, repairs, and buttons I’ve tackled since hardly qualify as “sewing.”    So I’m a little nervous.  The underside has to be as pretty as the outside (Steve Jobs had nothing on Maman): seams straight, threads tied, no bunching, everything tidy.  With her watching me, I measure several times before I cut.  I work slowly.  I protect the surfaces of the table and any other fabric when I glue.  I want to live up to her standards. 

Figures done

The work advances methodically.  We meet our daily objectives.  Day 1 we shop and cut.  Day 2 we glue.  Day 3 we measure and sew the background, and affix the letters.  Day 4, all there’s left is the doweling, the cord, and the packing.  Done, and ahead of schedule.  Maman would be proud, I think.   I am relieved.  Despite the decades since I’ve done anything like this, I have managed to avoid a calamitous error.  The background and the figures look wonderful.

 

“I love it,” my grandson says, a few days later, after we unroll the calendar and he places the figures,
starting with #1, the stable, and ending with #25, Baby Jesus.  As the star, the palm trees, the sheep, the magi and their camels, the angels, Joseph and then Mary take their place on the landscape while I narrate, I realize that he’s represented the Christmas story through this calendar. I tell Maman that her legacy lives on in our children’s love of reading, in their articulate speech, in the recipes handed down, and in the love they have for the town where I grew up.  Now, for her great-grandchildren, my grandchildren, that legacy perpetuates in this calendar, something she did through me.

 

 

 

Words That Stick

These days,  I feel I’m in a tug of war between my life bubble on one side, and national and international events on the other.  The knot slips to one side of the elusive middle line, and then to the other.  My goal is to maintain myself squarely on the centre line, equidistant from both polarities.  How to enhance the lives of people I know and love, in even the smallest way, andat the same time keep my eye on the wider world picture?  Honestly, I’m not sure.

For now, my energy focuses on understanding.  I read a lot in general, much of it provocative, maybe even esoteric, in some circles.  Gems abound in those pages, gems that can be shared.  That might be one contribution to the health of the community.  Ideas.  And different ideas.   For people to read, consider, and integrate (or not).  Not just  “ words, words, words, ” empty, thoughtless and insincere, that provoked that response from Hamlet to his so-called university friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  But perceptive, insightful comments and stark conclusions from thorough, well-documented and clear journalists and authors.  Words that stick.

 

Here are a few quotations from my recent explorations.  All the books are fabulous and life-changing, should you want to dig into the actual document.

 

Ryan Holiday, in Conspiracy:  Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue(2018, p. 294), reminds us of our duty as citizens.

 

"If you want to have a different world, it is on you to make it so. It will not be easy to do it—it may even require things that you are reluctant to consider.  It always has.  Moreover, that is your obligation if you are called to a higher task.  To to what it takes, to see it through."

 

 

Jennifer Walsh, in The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century( 2016, p. 297), analyzes threats facing the world as we knew it.

 

"If we want that deeper transformation, we have to initiate it ourselves.  This is what the history of the twentieth century revealed: individuals stepping up to draw attention to injustice, to demand greater equality of participation, and to stand up for fairness.  And they did so knowing that their demands would likely involve some personal sacrifice."

 

 

Isabel Wilkerson  in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020,  p. 16) has created a enlightening analogy to explain why citizens in the 21st century are bound to promises made to indigenous peoples and people of colour and travesties inflicted on those populations centuries before.

 

"We in the developed world are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside, but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even.  Many people rightly say, “I had nothing to do with how this all started.  I have nothing to do with the sins of the past.  My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves.”  And yes.  Not one of us was there when this house was built.  Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation.  We are the 
heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it.  We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.  And any further deterioration is, in fact, on our hands.

 

"Unaddressed, the ruptures and diagonal cracks will not fix themselves. The toxins will not go away but, rather, will spread, leach, and mutate, as they already have.  When people live in an old house, they come to adjust to the idiosyncrasies and outright dangers skulking in an old structure. They put buckets under a wet ceiling, prop up groaning floors, learn to step over that rotting wood tread in the staircase.  The awkward becomes acceptable, and the unacceptable becomes merely inconvénient.  Live with it long enough, and the unthinkable becomes normal.  Exposed over the generations, we learn to believe that the incomprehensible is the way that life is supposed to be."

 

Deb Caletti, in A Heart in a Body in the World (2020, p. 26 and p. 252), on change, or the lack of it.

 

“ ‘It is what it is, ’ Anabelle tells herself.   It’s a phrase she often finds comforting.  It reminds her to accept the truth rather than struggle against it.  But now, it sort of pisses her off.  Sometimes what is  is something that shouldn’t be.  It should never have been. It only is because of messed-up reasons going back messed-up generations, old reasons, reasons that don’t jibe with this world today.  Sometimes an is should have been gone long, long ago, and needs to be—immediately and forcefully and without a minute to lose—changed.  

 

She is more than pissed off.  Actually, it fills her with fury, the way people can protest and shout and write letters and yet, the is stays an is,  and bad, bad stuff can still happen and happen and happen.  There are no words for this.  It’s unbelievable.  It is a travesty.  It is a communal mark of shame. ”

 

“People plus people plus anger is how things can change.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resurrection

Three days now since Easter Sunday, and it still doesn’t feel much like resurrection.  The calendar confirms that Easter has occurred.  The liturgical calendar, too, says it’s Easter Season.  My husband and I “attended” the Triduum liturgies—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil.  We watched them from our home,  streamed from the Archdiocese.   

On Holy Saturday, we  witnessed the new fire, the celebration of light at the Easter Vigil.  We listened to the story of salvation history.  We heard the bells ring at the Gloria.  We listened to the Archbishop’s words about resurrection in the context of a pandemic.   We renewed our baptismal promises, and we followed along as the service continued with the celebration of the Eucharist.  No organizing the music ministry for the Triduum celebrations this year, no personal practicing, no rehearsals, no church attendance.  Just the two of us, in our home, part of a virtual community of more than fifteen hundred people.

That was Easter?  But it still feels like Lent.  Although the sun rises at 6:00 a.m. now and it’s still daylight while I’m cleaning up after supper, I wear my winter coat, boots, gloves and a toque for my afternoon walk.  We are at home, not visiting our children.    Our lives continue in letting-go mode:  letting go of cuddles with our grandkids; letting go of the work community; letting go of visits with friends; letting go of community gatherings.   Doing our part to flatten the curve means that Lent continues—for weeks.  We are still in the tomb with Jesus, longer than at any time in my memory.  Millions know that tomb much more intimately than we do. They experience a much more daunting impact:  illness, the loss of loved ones, job loss,  business shutdown, income constraints, family stresses.  Heart-rending loss.  Despite our collective eagerness to reclaim normalcy,  we hear even this morning that we will be in the tomb for weeks more.

Easter, beyond simple marking of the day and experience of the ritual, will come.   Resurrection will be ours.  One day, when it’s safe for all, we will leave the tomb.  We will rise again.   Resurrection 2020, though, can be a surprise, if we let it.   In the Epistle for the Easter Vigil from Romans (6.3-11), we heard:  “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.  For if we have been unified with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”   Resurrection is about NEW life.  Not just life.  Not normalcy.  Not the status quo. Resurrection is about transformation, change, surprise, pushing boundaries, things never being the same again.

So, the big question for me is, Will we allow this resurrection to realize its full potential impact on us individually and as a society?   How could we seize the opportunity?

       1.  Find personal meaning in the suffering and the isolation.  

As Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times,  “bringing meaning out of suffering is the saving work of God.”  He adds,   “even people suffering the sharpest pain will eventually leave the graveside and begin life after tragedy.  And in both cases — suffering that endures and suffering that belongs to the past — there is a need for something more than solidarity as time goes by; there is a need for narrative, for integration, for some story about what the pain and anguish meant.” (my bold).   We need to know that our time in the tomb has significance.  Does a return to the normal or the status quo respect the suffering in the tomb?   How does what we learn translate into a visible, tangible difference in our choices, our behaviour, our values,  as individuals and as society?

       2.  Resist attempts to ease back to the status quo.   

We will be vulnerable to attempts to continue as we were, unmarked, unchanged. Julio Vincent Gambuto, writing in Medium, anticipates “the greatest campaign ever created to get you to feel normal again.”  How can we resist that pull? He suggests that we “take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life.”  It’s like cleaning out a corner of the house because there’s been a water break.   Might as well take advantage of the necessity to sort through what’s worth keeping, and redesign the space to make it more comfortable and more functional.  “This is our chance to define a new version of normal,” Gambuto continues, “a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all.”   

       3.  Maintain an openness to what “new life” and resurrection could look like.  

Sonya Renee Taylor, performance poet, activist and transformational leader, is emphatic:  “We should not long to return [to a normal]” that, she says, “normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack.”   New life will mean re-envisioning the value we attribute to the roles in our society, and the congruence between those priorities and the resources we allocate.  All of us have an obligation to consider paradigms that might be outside our normal or habitual view of the world.  That, too, will be painful.  But it’s part of getting out of the tomb.  It’s the essence of resurrection.  The light could be blinding.

Easter means resurrection.  New life.  Not the same old life. New life means shedding the old one, bit by bit, burying those bits, and that involves suffering, hardship, stress.  If we allow ourselves to imagine what new life can mean, we will have the courage to let it happen. 

Covid Time

Our youngest granddaughter was born on February 19.  She came into the world looking quite surprised.  What am I doing here, she seemed to ask. After all, she was a week or so early.  Why is it so bright in here, her eyes in wee slits wondered.  Of course, how could she anticipate that there would even be a new world, never mind what it might look like.  She came on her own terms and in her own time, when grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends could still hold her, when visits were still possible, when everything on the outside was not a threat.  

She is five weeks old now.  Five weeks ago—a forgotten time, an epoch ago, a bygone era that may look very different from a new reality whenever we release the pause button on society. Paul Krugman, the economist and Nobel laureate  who writes for the New York Times,  has referred to our new reality as Covid Time.   What CovidTime looks like here in Canada and in various parts of the world fills our screens 24/7.

From my tiny sphere, it means:

o   a recognition more than ever that all we have is today, the moment, the choice for that moment;

o   an awakening of what we know deep down, and what our ancestors who lived on this land before us, knew: that success and failure, life and death, depend on community, and that in times of crisis, community coming together in solidarity is the linchpin;

o   awareness that my husband and I belong to the high risk group of +65, and that we stand to benefit from the risk that others take every day,  just going to work, a risk we can avoid;

o   deep gratitude and admiration for anyone on the frontlines of this pandemic—medical professionals, elected representatives at all levels of government, civil servants, people in retail and maintenance, truckers, anyone whose job definition means carrying the yoke of this pandemic or who can’t work from home, or can’t work, period;

o   an effort to do what we can to help the cause, even if that’s just to stay home, only take what we need, follow the protocols, hang on to our joy with both hands and try to pass some on, take care of those in need around us;

o   months ahead without visits to our children or cuddles from our grandchildren, all of whom live in neighboring provinces;

o   retooling myself to provide some distance ed opportunities for the students in my care this year, beginning Monday;

o   disbelief that somehow we threaded the needle of reasonable safety in a trip to Australia and New Zealand, from January 14 to February 8.   In unimaginable good fortune, the fires in Australia did not impact us, and, although we spent the last twelve days on a cruise ship, we escaped the coronavirus (or it bypassed us, not sure which).

CovidTime may also mean more time for sharing experiences and stories, an attempt to do my part to record history as it unfolds and to help myself and others manage the effects of that history.  To leave a record for my granddaughter of the first months of her life.

Stay well, everyone.

Solidarity

My classroom on Thursday,
prepped for social distancing Monday,
and now empty.

On Thursday, the last day of classes before the province-wide school shut-down in efforts to help plank the Covid19 pandemic, I’m in the school chapel at 2:00 p.m.  Alone.   I have my phone, and my rosary.  I’m wondering why I’m here.  Yes, an email I noticed by chance  a few minutes before reminding people to pray the rosary with Pope Francis at 2:00 did prod me.   And yes, my inner voice said, Why not go?  No excuses—I had just enough time before two pm; I had finished my work; the chapel was close by.  I even had the  rosary I had brought for  the prayer table.

Since September, I’ve been in a high school, drafted by the school division to help out in a pinch in the French Immersion department.  Life since then has been streamlined, to put it mildly, narrowed, to be realistic, the multiple driving lanes of my world reduced to one—school work.  This blog has been only one of the casualties. 

That’s why I was in a high school on Thursday. What took me to the chapel, rosary in hand, is more complicated to explain.  I’m not devoted to the rosary.  In fact, I wonder if I’ve ever said the rosary by myself in my life ever before.  I’ve prayed the rosary in church during various rites, and at home, with my parents off and on while they lived with us in their last years.  But alone?  No.  To me, the rosary has always been a communal devotion, something you do with others as a ritual.

So why, then, am I here, in a chapel, alone, with a rosary?  To pray for healing? For protection?  I’d have to say no, although the spirits of my children and grandchildren surround me in that space.    If not to pray for, then surely to pray alongside people all over the world.   To feel connected in my solitude to millions of others all over the world joined with Pope Francis to find strength in prayer and in each other in their own solitude.  

A need for solidarity took me to the chapel that Thursday.  The same sense of solidarity that moves me to distance myself from others, to wash my hands until the knuckles bleed, to stay home to protect those I love, as well as well as the medical professionals, the retailers, the maintenance people,  who keep society going.   Add to the list those who, like me, do their best to stay calm and carry on, one hour at a time, to get through this pandemic.

In that stillness and solidarity, as the Hail Marys slip by, a centering mantra, I think of a suggestion I’ve posted online for my history class.  Students are living history that they will share with their children and grandchildren.  They will read accounts of this period throughout their lives.  Why not, then, add their voice to the record? Journal, take photographs, talk to people, during the months to come, as their recorded experience of the pandemic will be primary source historical documents in the future. I do really need to walk the talk, to chronicle my own experience,  as well, in this space.   

After the last Glory be to the Father, I feel calm, settled, with a sense of purpose and an ironic gratitude that such a tragic event has opened up space in my recent life to reflect.  Here goes.

Retrospective : Names

I've surfaced after a 9 month silence, inspired by a Christmas Eve breakfast conversation related to the musical Cats and T. S. Eliot's poem, "The Naming of the Cats".  Searching for the poem, I realize that I did a blog post on the subject five years ago.  Here it is, a nostalgic retrospective.  Because today I have time.  Merry Christmas, everyone.

Names

None of the names is familiar to me.  Although I took the time in the fifteen minutes before the oratory contest to write the names of the contestants on each of the adjudication sheets the other judges and I have in our packages, I can’t find the Smith-Jones* my fellow judge has assigned to first place.  He has put Findley in second, and I can’t find that contestant, either.  I can find Amanda, and Tom, and Chelsey, and Brandon, and Stephanie, though.   I dig out my program from the pile of adjudication forms, and attempt to match the speakers’ first names to the last names I hear.  Even in the first two minutes of our discussion to finalize winners in each of the categories, I am uncomfortable referring to people by their last name.

For my judging partner, a police officer, wielding last names seems natural and comfortable.  The officer certainly means no disrespect.  Before the contest began, he chatted with the young people in the audience.  His genuine smile and evident interest in what they had to say established an easy rapport.    So, why would using last names be so normal for him yet spur such a visceral reaction in me?

He might be used to it, I speculate.  I would wager he remembers being called by his last name during his own training.   At that point, I ask myself in what contexts individuals might be called by their last name.   I come up with military and police recruits.  Boarding schools.  Sports teams.  Professional athletes.     Aristocratic men (Darcy, Bingley from Pride and Prejudice).   Authors.  As I have never been part of the military or the police, have never attended a boarding school or been part of a school sports team and definitely am not (yet) a professional athlete, a published novelist or a member of the aristocracy, calling people by their last names is foreign to me.  It’s not how I do things.

Throughout my career, I have always used first names.  I knew my students and my colleagues as Brittany, Cindy, Tom, or Dave.  Not Tremblay, Smith, Jones, or Findley.  Any last names I might have used have always been hooked up to an appellation like Miss, Mrs. or Mr. In fact,  names are so sacred to me that whenever I have been called by my last name (without appellation), I have always felt demeaned and intimidated, as if my identity as a person had been stripped away, and I had become a faceless object.  Which, in the end, might very well have been the intent.  

Our names are inextricably linked to our perception of ourselves.  That’s why most parents reflect a long time and weigh all possibilities for nicknames, initials, or connotations before naming their child.   That’s why bullies often torture their victim’s name as part of their concerted attack on the individual.  Their contortion can associate the name with unflattering, even lewd, overtones.   Any attack on our name targets our very identity, strikes at our essence, and disarms us.   T. S. Eliot alludes to the importance of our names in developing our identity in his poem, ‘The Naming ofthe Cats.’

In Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the poem that inspired Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical Cats, T. S. Eliot writes that a cat needs not only its everyday name and its fancy name.  A cat, Eliot reflects, needs  “a name that's particular, / A name that's peculiar, and more dignified.”  Without such a name, “how can he keep up his tail perpendicular, / Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?”  Without esteem for its name, a cat can’t be who it’s meant to be.  It can’t hold its tail up or spread out its whiskers.  Without names that are significant and instill pride, humans can’t be who they are meant to be either.  When they are not called by their particular, dignified names, their identity is compromised, and they will not actualize nor showcase their innate abilities and talents, that is, hold their tails perpendicular or spread out their whiskers.

When I first heard those words, sitting in the audience at Cats, I scratched them down in the dark in the small notebook I stowed in my purse for those occasions.  I recalled them after the oratory contest, as I reflected on why the use of last names might affect me so deeply.    In my worldview, a person’s name, so representative of identity, is sacrosanct.  Its utterance inspires growth and translates respect.

*Names in this post are fictitious.