Last night I stayed in the pool after our usual deep-water aerobics class was over to do some extra strength training. It was fairly quiet, since it was Friday evening and the weather had been nice; there was just one woman there with three little ones in the shallowest quarter of the pool. After a very irritating day, a good workout in the almost-too-warm water had left me feeling energized but too relaxed to get right out and drive home. It all made for the perfect circumstances to spend a little longer working on getting stronger.
I kept to the opposite end from the family, close to the swim lanes, next to those odd little diver's blocks that the competitive swimmers use. Working with weights and foam noodles in the water requires an odd bit of concentration for me. Though I am still relatively flexible, I'm neither athletic nor graceful, so I find myself staring unseeing at some focal point while I "fix" the move in my mind. Once I have it down, I snap back to reality and sometimes surprise myself with what I've been looking at or thinking about. Something like that happened last night. With noodles on each foot, I set myself into cross-country mode; I like this move and will keep up with it as long as I can keep the noodles down. It only took a moment to get going, and click! I realized I was looking at my own name up on the wall, on a white board with the other names of the swim team, their best times in each style, and the training instructions.
But no, it wasn't quite my name: "Cathy W." is what I saw, but why? There were probably 25 kids' names there, in very small writing on a huge chart, all done in the same blue Expo marker. Why had I seen my own name out of everything else on that board? In fact, why had that same kind of thing happened over and over? I know, readers, that you've had a very similar experience---you're driving down an unfamiliar road and see your nickname on a place of business or a billboard; you come across your full name unexpectedly in a book or newspaper; you do a double- or triple-take thinking someone has called out to you in a busy mall or stadium or theater. Each time, there's a little thrum of anticipation across the top of your brain, as though the universe has just casually but clearly recognized your existence, no matter how briefly. Validation: this name has meaning and power and purpose in the world.
In our frappaccinoed/blendered/technologized society, we've added on to these purposeful, simple monikers a selection of pictographs that are meant to represent us with little or no words even necessary. Check your name at the door; just show us your icon or a tagline. We only have to look at the popularity of tattoos to see how prevalent the idea is. This icon phenomenon worries me somewhat. Could it mean we're evolving backward, back to the hieroglyphics used by ancient man, before written or even spoken language? Most of the time, though, I'm like most people---it's just fun to think of alter egos, pseudonyms, pictures, and cartoons to stand in for us when we'd rather remain to some degree, a little or a lot, more anonymous.
If you'd asked me what represented me from the first time I could articulate it, all the way up through my early 20's, it would have been music notes, or something close to that. One would think it would be books, and I did indeed always have a book somewhere close by. But music was the foundation of all my love of the arts. Then for a rambunctious decade, my icon would have been those ridiculously long 120 cigarettes I smoked, so nice for brandishing about with a drink in one hand in an elegantly estrogen-washed persona of Ernest Hemingway I liked to play at, but never could fully pull off. And then, for a glorious dozen or so years, a head of wildly curly, long, full hair: that was truly my motif, the one I most happily chose. The curls were always there; I just fought them until they came in fashion in the 90's, and then embraced them with joy until, mysteriously, I lost most of my hair. In fact, it's still that 30-something girl waving that silly smoke around and pulling up her hair in a ponytail that I picture in my head, when I picture myself, and it's a shock to realize that it's been a decade since anyone knew me with long, full hair. For most women, we have some icon of personal pride that revolves around our style or our looks.....and it's a cruel thing when it doesn't represent us anymore, no matter how plain or pretty the rest of the world saw us to be.
I don't comment on websites or have a lot of personas with pseudonyms out there on the web, just here and on Facebook. In both cases, I find that my taglines and my photo icons almost always have one theme anymore: home, family, which are synonymous to me. I have a photo here of me walking along the old railroad bed that bisects the family ranch, taken back in the summer by my sister. On Facebook, I almost always have a photo with one or more of my nieces in it. I'd have my nephews if they'd sit still for it. Teaching has always defined me; I could have a teacher icon with a book and a purple pen---that's what I grade with---but I know that in a few years I'll have to find something to replace that with as retirement approaches.
It's an interesting place to be in the world: to wonder what will next represent me in this life. On one hand, I have the comfort of knowing that Cathy W. or C. Welker or CJ or CJW will always be recognizable to my mind's eye. On the other, there's excitement for what I can choose as my motif for the future.
And how about you, reader? What's your sign?
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